


To Accept Praise

by ncfan



Series: Femslash Big Bang 2020 [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (It's Marianne you know the drill), (except it's not Verdant Wind), F/F, Femslash, Femslash Big Bang, Femslash Big Bang Monthly Challenge, Gen, POV Female Character, Praise, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Self-Esteem Issues, route agnostic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24945256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: It's not as simple as it sounds, when you bear such tainted blood.
Relationships: Marianne von Edmund/Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Series: Femslash Big Bang 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617850
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29
Collections: Femslash Big Bang





	To Accept Praise

The training grounds were not somewhere Marianne went very often. She attended when directed by professors and combat instructors, and avoided it when not. She did not think her presence there would be constructive for those who wanted to spar, or take up a bow for target practice, or do their exercises. She did not think her presence would be a help to anyone who wished to practice outside of training sessions. She did not think that there was anything she could do to help them.

Marianne did not go to the training grounds except when directed. That was true of most places, as well. She did not go to the greenhouse except when directed. She did not go to the dining hall, except at mealtimes. She did not go to her classroom except when it was time for class, not even when she had left a book or assignment behind. Marianne went to the cathedral to pray when she felt struck by the need. She went to the stables when she needed the company of the horses. But all other places she avoided, and since the training grounds had the highest likelihood of injuries being caused by her presence if her luck spread to others, Marianne avoided them in particular.

She blinked up at the doors as she approached, biting back a sigh. The Goddess heard all their sighs, or at least, that was what Mercedes believed, and she spoke with such conviction that it was difficult not to believe her. The Goddess heard all their sighs, but Marianne did not think that she _appreciated_ hearing all of their sighs. Certainly not when they came from a mouth such as hers.

She was here at direction.

She was here at direction, and that was another reason the Goddess would no doubt regard her sighs with displeasure—why sigh in such a way, when to refuse this would be disobedience of one who was deemed worthy of serving in the highest church in Fódlan?

She was here at direction. Marianne pushed the doors inward, and stepped inside.

Professor Melusine was not their house professor, and there were some, Hilda in particular, who had been a little put-out by the idea that Professor Melusine, serving as a combat instructor to all of the students of the Officers Academy, could give students outside of her own house instructions and assignments that were just as binding as those given to them by their house professor. Hilda had complained about it to Marianne just this day, after they had left their classroom—“ _Ugh, this is really gonna cut into my beauty sleep. How am I supposed to fight if I haven’t had enough rest?”_

Marianne could not answer that question. She wasn’t qualified to answer it. It was not her place to try to answer it.

Professor Melusine had given them an assignment, one that would see all of the students of the Officers Academy spending extra time at the training grounds for the foreseeable future. For weeks now, she had been training them all in the use of physical weapons, even those students like Mercedes and Linhardt who specialized purely in magic. Professor Melusine was… Marianne could not readily say what she _was_ , not all of her, together. But when she cared to give her opinions, she had the habit of making them clear enough that there was no way of mistaking them. If any of them were to pursue martial careers, there would come a time when they needed to rely on physical weaponry, even if they intended to specialize purely in magic. They must be prepared. They must be ready.

Marianne was decent with a sword. She could never claim to have the same level of skill or talent as Professor Melusine herself, nor even as certain of her classmates (Felix and Petra came to mind), but she was decent with a sword. She still lost most of her sparring matches—not really a surprise, not to her—but she had been fencing since…

She had been fencing for a long time. Long enough that even someone like Marianne could claim some small amount of skill with the sword.

As long as it was just the assignment as it had been, just training with one physical weapon, Marianne had not been struggling. She had not been doing spectacularly, but she’d not expected to do spectacularly. A satisfactory performance was the most she could expect from herself, and a satisfactory performance was the one that she had given.

But now, there was something new, and that something new would see Marianne visiting the training grounds outside of classes and training sessions for many weeks to come. Whether she wished it or not, whether she thought anything would come of it or not, this was what she must do.

Professor Melusine was not content with the students of the Officers Academy having a reasonable amount of proficiency with one physical weapon. She wished for the students under her care to be versatile on the battlefield, even those who would normally have been devoting their attentions purely to healing their wounded comrades. So it was that Professor Melusine instructed the students under her care to pick a second weapon, sword, axe, lance, gauntlet, bow, and familiarize themselves with it. There was no expectation, she had made perfectly clear, for them to become as proficient in this second weapon as with the one they had been training with since first arriving at the Officers Academy, but they must be proficient enough that, if they were dropped into a battlefield and given this second weapon to fight with, they would at least be able to make it to the lines to pick up one they could fight with more proficiently.

It was an expression of care. Marianne should not resent it. She should not resent having her own inadequacies brought to the forefront. They were _her_ inadequacies, and if they presented her with trouble, it was her fault for having them in the first place.

And though her adoptive father had not sent her to the Officers Academy with any real expectation of her returning home a trained warrior, Marianne knew also that he had sent her here with the expectation that she would fulfill all of the assignments given out to her by her instructors. After all the effort he had gone through to see her sent here—and after all the money he had paid the Church to ensure that they would not enquire about her possessing a Crest—Marianne knew what she must make of herself, if she was willing to see that effort go to waste. Of all the things she had made of herself, of all the things she had been made, she did not wish to add that to the list.

_If I can only find time when no one else is here…_

Today would not be such a time. Marianne slipped in through the doors to find the training grounds nearly empty, but not entirely. Ingrid was training with a lance at the far end of the grounds, running through her exercises with the sort of focused zeal that Marianne could never hope to match, but that meant also that Ingrid was unlikely to notice her here in the training grounds at the same time. That… That was…

That was good, Marianne thought. Ingrid’s room was adjacent to hers in the dormitories. She could not claim to know Ingrid well—she’d not gone about getting to know her classmates too well; they could not find any happiness in knowing her well—but Ingrid had been nice. She had been nicer than Marianne deserved. She remembered it when people were nicer than she deserved. She tried not to hang around them too much. She did not want to give them her luck.

If Ingrid was too focused upon her training to notice Marianne, then perhaps, if Marianne stayed clear of her, then nothing would happen. Her sort of luck caught very easily, but if she stayed clear, if she did not speak with her, tried her best not to _look_ at her…

It was all that Marianne could hope for. And given what she was supposed to be doing today, it would not be too difficult to focus on what she was doing without watching Ingrid, she hoped.

Biting back another sigh—not only would the Goddess not appreciate it, but it could also have alerted Ingrid to her presence—Marianne turned her attention to the weapons racks.

And now, she hit upon another problem.

Marianne did prefer working with magic. She liked healing best, but she had found an aptitude for offensive magic that she’d not expected before Professor Manuela began training her. Professor Melusine insisted on their training with physical weapons, and Marianne suspected that the only reason that she had done half as well as she had was because she had been fencing for a… for a long time. So far, she had managed to scrape by. So far.

The sword was acceptable because it was familiar. The sword did not feel like a weapon for killing people, even though Marianne _knew_ that was what it was, because she had spent so much time using a sword in a context where death was never likely to occur. As for the rest…

Perhaps she could have taken up the bow. Archery contests were a popular pastime in Alliance territory, and though she had never attended one for herself, Marianne knew that there were contests held in her own home territory thrice yearly. But the bow was a prime weapon for hunters, and Marianne could not imagine herself holding one and firing an arrow without imagining a wailing deer writhing on the ground, bleeding to death as the hunters held back their dogs. No. No. The bow was not for her.

The axe was rejected immediately, Marianne swallowing back a shudder as her mind was flooded with images of scaffolds and black masks and the cold kiss of steel on the back of her neck.

Marianne did not want to punch anyone. Gauntlets were dismissed out of hand.

That only left her with one real option.

Perhaps it was for the best. Marianne was at her best on horseback, and most who fought from horseback fought with lances, if they were going to eschew the bows. If she intended to specialize in learning to fight from horseback while she was here, Marianne knew that Professor Manuela and all of her other instructors would expect her to know how to handle a lance.

Perhaps it was for the best, but in the end, it did not matter. The lance was the only option she had left, the only one that did not immediately turn her stomach.

Marianne plucked up the lance on the far left-hand side of the rack of training lances available to the students, and stepped out onto the earthen floor of the training grounds.

She had been to one or two tourneys in her time (Her father had—). They were not as overwhelmingly popular in the Alliance as they were in the Kingdom, but they were a good way to make money and to ease uneasy tempers in times of peace, when there were no real enemies to take up a weapon against. According to Hilda, they were also a good way to meet cute young knights, though Marianne had never paid much attention to that particular feature.

Marianne had only been to one or two tourneys in her time, but each had been memorable, and she had remembered the way the veteran contestants, the ones who had eventually taken away the purse of prize money, had held their lances as they charged down their opponents. On top of that, though she tried not to look too long at anything that wasn’t directly related to what she was supposed to be doing when she was at the training grounds, Marianne’s resolve sometimes flagged, and she had surreptitiously watched her classmates train with their lances enough times to have an idea of the basic exercises she needed to perform. If this turned out to be insufficient, she could visit the library during a time when no one else was likely to be there—during mealtimes should be good. She wasn’t going to bother one of the instructors by asking them to take time out of their day to teach her, not when she wasn’t likely to ever be any better than average (And personally, Marianne thought that the high end of mediocrity was more likely than that).

Her swings and her strikes were…

Marianne was weak. She knew that much. She did not have much strength in her arms, for all of her meager skill with the sword; she had been fencing for a long time, but with a foil, rather than with _any_ sort of sword that someone would have actually taken out onto the battlefield. She was used to the light, quick movements used in fencing, and transitioning to a heavier sword, even the wooden training swords, had been a difficult adjustment.

A lance was something else entirely. The training lance she had picked up was heavier than the training sword she had been using in sessions since coming here. Where a sword was primarily blade and only a small portion of the weapon was something that Marianne could safely grasp, a lance was just the opposite. She knew immediately where to put her hands when wielding a sword, but a lance was considerably less obvious. Marianne eventually settled for keeping her left hand close to the butt of the spear, and her right arm stretched nearly all the way out, so that her right hand grasped a portion of the shaft considerably closer to the blade. She felt a little more in control of the lance this way, but it was still unwieldy in her grip; when she tried to swing sharply right, her whole body was taken with the lance, Marianne having to plant her left foot firmly upon the ground to keep from falling over.

It was not an auspicious start. Marianne had not expected an auspicious start. At least there were no surprises in store today.

While she was trying to figure out how best to hold the lance, so that if she was ever on a battlefield with such as her only weapon, Marianne would not do herself an injury before the enemy could even get to her, Ingrid carried on her own exercises at the other end of the training grounds, yet oblivious to Marianne’s presence, or seemingly so. Marianne should not have been looking her way. Besides the fact that her luck caught so very easily, Marianne needed to focus on her own training, rather than dawdling by watching someone else at hers. She owed Professor Melusine her obedience, and in order to _give_ Professor Melusine her obedience, she must focus on her own training, rather than gawking at someone else going about the business of _hers_.

But what had so many other promises of obedience and goodness run to? They had run to nothing, for though her heart might wish to be obedient, her mind was mired in rebellion and her eyes wandered far more than what was good for anyone whose gaze they lingered upon.

As long as Marianne could not pick up on the strain of obedience, she might at least try to gain some edification from disobedience. She set the butt of her lance upon the earthen floor of the training grounds, and giving up for now on the idea of getting any real training in this afternoon, began to watch Ingrid more closely at her exercises.

They’d not had much opportunity to interact in this space, not for its intended purpose. Professor Melusine had called the three houses together for joint training sessions many times already this year, but Marianne’s path had never crossed with Ingrid’s here. Part of that was down to sheer chance, the strange luck—whatever sort of luck it would turn out to be, when the day of revelation was to come at last—that had kept Professor Melusine from assigning them to each other for one-on-one sparring. That was part of it, but Marianne could not honestly claim that it was the only reason.

It had been intentional. Ingrid was already at risk enough from sheer proximity. There was a wall separating their bedrooms in the dormitories, but there had been walls separating Marianne from her parents’ bedchambers, and that had not been enough to protect them, in the end. (Sometimes, she wondered if her father had not had the same sort of luck as her. Sometimes, she wondered if it had been her father’s luck at work, rather than hers. But that was uncharitable. Her father was dead, and it was uncharitable to lay such accusations at the feet of the dead. Marianne must bear that burden, now.) They were already in such close proximity to each other, made all the closer by the fact that Ingrid was at the door to Marianne’s room the moment Marianne awoke from a nightmare, or if she knocked something over in the dead of night when she could not sleep and her fatigue stripped what little deftness lived in her trembling hands.

Marianne did not wish Ingrid ill. Ill would inevitably be Ingrid’s, if she spent too much time around Marianne, and quite frankly, the fact that their bedrooms shared a wall was cutting things awfully close. If Marianne wished to keep any ill from befalling Ingrid, some degree of avoidance was necessary. A large degree. So yes, it had been intentional. Professor Melusine might never have assigned Marianne and Ingrid to spar against one another, but Marianne had done what she could to avoid drawing Ingrid’s attention to her during the training sessions. She did not want Ingrid to notice her. She did not want her luck to catch.

She could at least keep silent, Marianne supposed. If she kept very quiet and very still, perhaps she could watch Ingrid without Ingrid noticing her. Perhaps, if their eyes never met, if Ingrid never realized that she was training under her classmate’s scrutiny, Marianne could keep her luck to herself, and Ingrid would walk away from the training grounds no worse off for having shared them with Marianne.

Marianne did not know Ingrid very well, but it was clear that Ingrid had been training with a lance for a long, long time. Her movements were confident and powerful, and what was more, they did not seem at all like something Ingrid had to think consciously about as she ran through her exercises. Instead, she moved almost as though through a dream, every motion of her arms and legs smooth and automatic. She did not have to think about what she was doing. She had been doing this for so long that she did not have to think about it at all.

On top of that, Ingrid did not seem at all at a loss for what to do with the lance in her hands. Marianne couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to attack an enemy with the lance, let alone what it would be like if she was to strike them with it. Leaving aside all of that, Marianne couldn’t even figure out how best to hold the lance at all. But if Ingrid was at this very moment imagining striking a helpless opponent with her lance, Marianne would not have been surprised. Her strikes reflected in full the confidence and the power she exhibited in her stance and the sweeping motions of her arms. If Marianne did not know better, did not know that the Kingdom rarely allowed noble girls to go to battle, she would have thought that Ingrid was already a veteran of many battles.

She… she was going to have to go into battle herself, eventually. Marianne had been lucky, so far, or as lucky as she ever was. Her class had not been summoned for any missions that involved her or any of her classmates being pitted against a foe who meant them real harm. But her luck wasn’t going to hold forever—it never did—and eventually, she was going to find herself in a situation where it was her life, or her foe’s. For as long as she stayed in the Officers Academy, it was inevitable that this would eventually befall her. She did not think she could go into battle with such confidence. She did not think she could go into battle with any confidence at all.

Marianne’s gaze lingered on Ingrid’s face, long after she had finally torn them away from her powerful arms and legs. Ingrid wore an expression of intense concentration, her green eyes narrowed as she ran through the exercises again and again and again. Even from all the way on the other side of the training grounds, Marianne could make out the beads of sweat glistening on her brow as they slid down Ingrid’s face, but Ingrid did not seem to take note of it, not enough to stop and take a handkerchief to her sweaty face.

That level of focus was… It was admirable. Marianne wished she could emulate it; as it was, all she could do was watch, and bask in it. Her adoptive father’s estate did have plenty of guards, and even a few household knights (they were, after all, one of the border territories, and were vulnerable from both land and sea), and while Marianne had never watched them at their morning exercises—it would not do to spread her luck around to the people who helped defend the estate and the territory at large—she imagined that it would look something like this. Ingrid had a level of discipline that Marianne had not seen replicated in many of their classmates. She had a level of discipline that Marianne would not have expected from someone whom she thought was the same age as her.

It was…

She was not supposed to be watching. Heat flooded into Marianne’s face. She had been staring entirely too long; even if she did not have the sort of luck that she did, even if she could not bring ill down on someone just by being around them, the time when it would have been even remotely appropriate to keep on watching had long since passed. She was not going to make much progress today. She would have to see if the library was empty, and try to find a book that could help her if it was. She should not be prevailing upon Ingrid, should not be… Marianne’s face grew hotter, the heat so great she half-expected to feel blood beading on her skin. She should not be _staring_ , not when Ingrid was just trying to go through her own daily exercises without anyone bothering her.

Marianne was a bother. She was well-enough-acquainted with herself to acknowledge this. She was a bother, and she had enough decency within herself to know when she should remove herself from the places where she was being a bother.

Marianne was a bother, and wished to be otherwise. With that in mind, she took her lance back to the racks, setting it in its place… but with much more of a clatter than she had wanted.

“Marianne?”

Marianne nearly swallowed her tongue when she heard her name called out. Immediately, she was cursing herself, though not where Ingrid could hear her—she’d been enough of a bother already, why impose even more than she already had?—wondering why she had even stayed in here in the first place once it had become clear that she was not alone. Oh, Ingrid could get so wrapped up in her training that she wouldn’t _immediately_ notice when she was no longer alone in the training grounds, but she was sharp enough to notice a newcomer eventually, especially when that newcomer was a clumsy oaf who would inevitably make a racket at some point while she was in there with Ingrid. She should have left the moment she realized that Ingrid was in here as well, should never have lingered, should _certainly_ never have _stared_ …

Well, it was too late now to have never been in the training grounds. Marianne righted the lance, setting it down more neatly into its place on the rack, never meeting Ingrid’s gaze. Not that she needed to; she could feel Ingrid’s gaze boring into her back, as intensely focused as she had been when she was training. It was not a gaze that Marianne could escape without quitting the training grounds completely, and well? Well, that was quite convenient, actually.

“Marianne?” Ingrid called out once more. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m sorry!” Marianne forced out, her voice a strangled near-whisper as she covered the distance from the racks to the doors of the training grounds in about the same amount of time she thought she would have done had she been fleeing from a highwayman armed with an axe. No doubt Ingrid would be insulted by this, but though the idea of it put a bitter spur in Marianne’s stomach, it was not greeted with any shock. Marianne could not remember the last time she had been able to extricate herself from such a situation without striking some sort of injury, without paying some sort of insult. Why should now be any different?

-0-0-0-

As she had predicted earlier, Marianne did indeed have to go into the library during the evening meal to get in there at a time when none of the students or staff would be present. If nothing else, this was just about the only time she could get in when the librarian, Tomas, would not be around; he was not a young man, he was devoted to his work, and the combination of these factors amount to Marianne having rarely seen him step away from the library, unless it was to attend to the basic needs of his own body. Marianne would have to neglect her own body, if she wished to gain any edification.

That was not so bad. Everyone must neglect their own bodies from time to time, in order to gain enlightenment. The Church preached sternly against the evils of over-indulgence on the parts of the faithful; anyone who was truly faithful to Saint Seiros and the Goddess must needs go without from time to time, if they wished for Saint Seiros and the Goddess to be happy with them. Someone like Marianne must needs go without quite regularly, if she wished ever for the Goddess to be even remotely happy with her. A person like Marianne must mortify her flesh by any means available, so that her repentance might reach the ears and eyes of a Goddess who must regard her tainted blood with intense disfavor.

A library was a place that Marianne could navigate through much more comfortably than the training grounds. Though there were more books in the shelves by far than there were weapons in the racks, and though this library was dizzyingly huge compared to the libraries she had known, it operated on the same system of organization as the other libraries she had known, and a library was a far more comfortable place than training grounds, anyways. Knowledge could destroy, certainly; Marianne carried knowledge within her own body that would easily destroy her if ever it was known. But in her experience, knowledge was something that did far more good than evil. A physician saved their patient’s life with their knowledge. A guide could lead a party through the wilderness safely if they knew the wilderness well enough. An engineer could design a safer, more sanitary way to deal with a city’s waste, with sufficient knowledge.

The library being so much more easily navigated, Marianne soon found the section she was looking for. There were indeed several treatises on various weapons and the appropriate ways to train with them and fight with them. Fódlan had often been at war, both with its neighbors and with itself; there had been many opportunities for the knowledge of warfare to be refined, and for innovations to be recorded for future generations.

(Not that even this, the greatest library in all of Fódlan, rivaled only by the library in the Imperial Palace in Enbarr, was entirely complete. There was a series of volumes by Tacina that had been written around the same time that the Leicester Alliance was formed. They were well-known in Alliance territory; even Marianne, who avoided such conversations, had grown up hearing about them. Tacina had reportedly written twenty-seven volumes in total, and no one, absolutely _no one_ , had the complete set. Marianne had heard Linhardt complaining about how even _this_ library did not have copies of all twenty-seven volumes, and sure enough, when Marianne paused in her search to count them, she found only nineteen. Where the other eight were, no one now could say. Perhaps thieves had come and taken them; no doubt they would be valuable. Or perhaps time had claimed them long ago.)

Eventually, Marianne found a book about the art of fighting with a lance. It was a slim little volume, but that in itself might be a blessing. It would take her less time to find exactly what it was she needed to know when she was reading out of a short book than it would out of a long book.

And… and she did find what she needed to know. And were she a more adept student, perhaps she would have profited from this. There were pictures and diagrams, there were instructions and examples and scenarios put to her. And when Marianne looked at all of these pictures and diagrams, read all of these instructions and examples and scenarios, here in this library, so far away from the training grounds and the lances and the place where all of her lessons had taken place… she didn’t understand any of it.

Well, perhaps that was not _quite_ what it was. Marianne _understood_ what she was reading, but she could not connect any of it to what she was supposed to be doing with her lance and her body when she was training. She read passages about stance and technique, and could not imagine herself performing them, could not imagine herself holding her body and her lance the way these passages said she should. She could not even imagine the _angles_ required.

Marianne set the book aside, slumping in her chair.

Why could the assignment Professor Melusine had put to them not have involved the care of the animals they were likely to ride into battle? Marianne could see easily how that would be just as vital as learning how to handle a second weapon; even if someone planned to _fight_ on foot, it was still difficult to get from battlefield to battlefield without a horse or a pegasus or a wyvern being involved. And if you _did_ ride a steed into battle itself, it was vital to ensure that they were healthy before you did so; the difference between riding a healthy horse and a sickly horse could easily translate into the difference between surviving and being killed.

Besides that, Marianne thought that many of her classmates did not understand everything you needed to do to take care of the animals under your care. In some cases, that was no doubt unavoidable; from what little she knew of Dorothea’s upbringing, for instance, it sounded as if Dorothea had lived in Enbarr all her life, and had had little experience with animals larger than a dog. But Lysithea had been saying some things about pegasi that made Marianne think that she had never even been in the _vicinity_ of a pegasus, let alone been involved in their care, and even if Lysithea never rode a pegasus, never took one into battle, it would still be better for her to _know_ these things.

Marianne would have liked it, if she was assigned to learn more about the care of the battle-steeds the monastery kept for the use of the knights and the students. There was something so soothing about brushing a horse’s mane, checking the hooves of a horse or a pegasus for rocks, and scrubbing down a wyvern to aid it in shedding its dead skin and to keep infestations—whatever they might be; depending on the climate of the wyvern’s home, they could vary wildly—and it was rewarding to care for these animals, especially when it was in ways that they weren’t able to care for themselves. There was little that Marianne could do for the people around her that would not hurt them, one way or another. If she could pour her caring into these animals without it all turning to rot, she would pour her caring there, and try to find some contentment in the act.

What she wanted was not what could be. Marianne had not been assigned to the stables or the caves where the wyverns dwelled, had not been assigned to learn all she could of their proper care and to implement that learning into caring for them. She had been assigned to learn what she could of a second physical weapon. She had chosen a lance. Thus far, she had been having little luck with the lance. She had come here for knowledge, and she had found knowledge, but she had no idea what to _do_ with it.

The time for the evening meal would soon be past. Though Marianne had noticed that fewer people came up here after supper than they did after lunch, she was sure that there would be some students making their way towards here before too long. She had heard that the Blue Lions had an exam next week; surely some of them would be here, trying to study. Marianne could not be here when they arrived. If it was at all possible for her to avoid it, she should avoid coming into too close contact with her classmates. Who knew what could happen to them, otherwise?

-0-0-0-

Even without the benefit of teaching that she could make heads or tails of, Marianne _did_ try to improve her work with a lance. To dishonor Professor Melusine with her disobedience would be… it would be displeasing. To Professor Melusine and to her own professor, to the Goddess, to Marianne herself. There was so little that Marianne could do to erase the disgrace of her blood. There seemed no point in _trying_. But she could at least try to avoid heaping on any _more_ disgrace by blatantly disregarding the instructions and commands of those who had authority over her. As long as she was on this earth, she could at least try not to be an eyesore, when she was required to be out among others.

So Marianne had practiced. Alone. There had come times when she had come to the training grounds and found Ingrid training there alone, and in those times, Marianne had listened to her own better judgment, turned on her heel and left Ingrid to train alone, and had waited until after Ingrid had left to go in and try to do something, anything, with a lance that wouldn’t have been a complete and total failure to actually train.

Sometimes, she had to wait a long time for Ingrid to be done. Actually, if Marianne was being honest, she _often_ had to wait a long time for Ingrid to finish training. She wondered sometimes just how late Ingrid had to stay up to finish her own homework assignments, or study for her own exams, considering how much time she spent in the training grounds on most days. She wished, sometimes, that she had looked more often to Ingrid’s face before all of this began, to see if fatigue showed itself under her eyes. But it was too late for that, and anyways, if Ingrid ever had any trouble finishing her assignments on time, if she ever had any trouble studying properly for her exams, no whispers of it had ever made their way to Marianne’s ears.

Eventually, Ingrid always left the training grounds, even if she lingered there until well after dark, some days. Marianne made certain to stand so that Ingrid would not see her lingering outside of the doors, no matter what path she took after leaving, be it to her room in the dormitories, or to the dining hall or the stables, or to the cathedral to pray or take part in choir practice when it came her turn to sing. Finding a place to stand where Ingrid would not see her, no matter which one of these places she was heading to, had not been the easiest thing in the world, but then, Marianne had had a long time to practice being inconspicuous. There were some lessons that did stick, even if the lessons she _needed_ to stick were not nearly so obliging.

Marianne did find the solitude she needed, in order to train—or to try to train—without having to worry about what her proximity would do to those around her. She did wonder sometimes, when it was very late and she was very tired and she was drinking of her own bitterness, if her luck could spread to inanimate objects that were used by others. She was already so careful about handling any of the fruits and vegetables they had growing in the greenhouse; it was churlish to avoid picking them in the manners that she did, but when the alternative loomed before her, and she thought about what her luck could do to _food_ , laying hands on things that others would eat seemed more churlish by far. Could not her luck spread to a lance, as well?

The lance was dead, though. The wood was dead, and dead things could not transmit anything, let alone things like the accursed luck of Marianne’s tainted blood. So long as she was careful not to let any of her tainted blood seep into the wood of the lances she trained with, perhaps it would be alright. She told herself that. She wanted to believe that.

So, that excuse was far out of reach. Marianne must train.

And she _did_ try. In the days to come, she would have liked for everyone involved to remember that she had tried. Even if there had been no witnesses to her attempts, she had tried to train. As much of an eyesore as she was, she was not so inconsiderate as to try to engineer situations where people would have to stay in her company to scold her for having failed to do as she was told. She had been given this assignment. She had _tried_ to fulfill it.

Marianne had _tried_ to fulfill her obligations, and she had found that her _trying_ had come to the same end that virtually every attempt she made at fulfilling her obligations ever did. Namely, to absolutely nothing.

It was a testament of what a poor student she was. That was all it could be; Professor Melusine had proven a competent enough teacher to enough of the other students of the Officers Academy that wherever the fault lied, it must lie with Marianne. Marianne had made no progress since first she had selected the training lance from the racks, and the fault for it must lie with her. If she was a better student, if she was more diligent, if she was not weighed down with the burdens of her tainted blood, if she could find the strength within her to push past those burdens and show the proper piety and obedience in spite of her disadvantages, Marianne would have made more progress than she had. If she was a better student, more diligent, more perseverant, she would have made any progress at all.

Marianne came to the training grounds night after night, after the evening tutoring sessions were done, after Ingrid had left, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not make any progress. She could not make any of what she had read in the library make sense to her. She could not dredge up any half-remembered bit of knowledge from the last training session all the houses had had together, when Professor Melusine and the other instructors present had gone over the different weapon types, that would have helped her here. When it came to physical weapons, Marianne’s knowledge rested largely with swords. What she knew of lances, she knew from watching when she should not have been watching. It was not much in the way of a _foundation_.

Marianne came to the training grounds night after night, and all she accomplished was to work herself into a sweat that had little to do with the satisfaction of fruitful exercise. At the very least, no one was present to watch her fail to do anything meaningful, over and over and over again, but this was cold consolation when she thought about how likely it was that she would just humiliate herself in front of a group, when it finally came time for Professor Melusine to call upon them to show her what they had learned. Humiliation would be hers, one way or another, one day or another. The idea that it would be tomorrow instead of today, that it would be in front of a crowd instead of being in front of a smaller audience, it was not a comfort. It was not the torment it would have been to someone who was not used to such things, someone for whom pain was less familiar, but still, Marianne could not say that she _liked_ the idea of the humiliation that would inevitably be hers.

Still, she had known that she was going to have to get used to discomfort when first her adoptive father came to her with the study materials for the entrance exams. She had known that he wanted her to take those exams, she had known that he wanted her to _pass_ those exams, she had known that he wanted her to accept the offer to attend the Academy that would surely follow if she passed the entrance exams, and Marianne knew exactly what it was that her adoptive father wanted for her, once she entered the Academy. There were, after all, not _that_ many ways to meet eligible young men, not when Duke Riegan’s court had no duchess who could accept young ladies into her household, and Marianne was not the sort of person that anyone would be looking to give court appointments to, even in exchange for favors done by her adoptive father.

(He had made the occasional comment about the other benefits Marianne could take away from the Academy, but those had made little impact. Marianne was never going to be a good wife. Someone like her could never be a good wife, for part of being a good wife entailed producing children, and how could someone with her tainted blood ever bring children into the world? How could Marianne ever be a good mother, when any child she brought into the world would carry the same taint of her blood? No. Marianne was never going to be a good wife, or a good mother. Why on earth should she be a good warrior, either? Why on earth should the teachings of the Academy be able to make any difference upon her at all?)

She would keep trying. And when the moment of humiliation inevitably came, she would try to bear that, as well.

-0-0-0-

The three houses did not have shared training sessions with Professor Melusine every day, obviously. There just wasn’t _time_ for it, in between everything else the three houses were doing. The other combat instructors made certain demands upon the students, and then there were the afternoon training sessions for the magic-oriented students with Professor Hanneman and Professor Manuela, and the instructors had to give the students enough time to do their homework assignments and study for exams and do their assigned chores for the week and even have some free time in all of that, when they could find a spare moment. If Professor Melusine was calling all three of the houses into the training grounds for her own special sessions, no one would have ever had time for anything once those training sessions were over—at the very least, many more of the students would have started becoming visibly sleep-deprived, for surely their other responsibilities would have started eating into the time they would otherwise have devoted to sleep, if they had to deal with those long training sessions every single day—let alone the toll the punishing physical regimen would exact on their bodies, if they went through them every day without a break.

There wasn’t time for them to have shared training sessions every day, but that did not mean that Marianne could go another week without a reprieve. No, there was not to be such a long reprieve.

Marianne tugged at the sleeve hem of her tunic as she took up a position in one of the lines of students in the training grounds. The padded uniform she had been given to wear when she was to attend formal combat instruction was not so different than the clothing she had worn… before, when she had fenced, and yet, it felt so much bulkier and more cumbersome. The effect was purely in Marianne’s mind, she knew. She had looked at the clothes laid out on her bed many times now, and had seen nothing about them that would justify her feeling as if they were so much heavier than the clothes she had worn when she had taken up a fencing foil. It was just something she would have to get over.

When Marianne was supposed to get over it, she had no idea. She was still waiting for the moment when it clicked into place, when the clothes stopped feeling any heavier or more unwieldy than they logically should, and the moment had not yet arrived. She just had to try to work around it.

There could be no mistaking what they had all been called here for; Professor Melusine had made it clear enough. The lance Marianne had selected from the racks, a different one than the one she had been trying to train with (Hubert had selected that one before Marianne could get to it), felt as awkward in her hands as any lance ever had, and Marianne saw little point in trying to hide it. Even if by some chance she actually managed to hide it for a little while, it would become obvious as soon as she was called upon to do anything with the lance that she had precious little idea of what _to_ do with it at all. It would be obvious that she had not approached any of the other combat instructors for help. It would be obvious that she had not been able to make a connection between the things she had read and the things she should be doing in the training grounds. It would be obvious that she had not been spending her time wisely.

Very soon, humiliation would be hers. Marianne would have thought that she would have been more distressed at the idea, but though there was a weight forming in the pit of her stomach, it was not enough to make her pulse begin to pick up. It was not enough to make her heart race, or the blood pump more harshly through her veins. Humiliation would be hers, very soon. This was a fact, not an assumption. It was a fact that she would soon be humiliated, and given that there was no way of avoiding it, it wasn’t something capable of really changing anything within Marianne’s own body. She did not look forward to it. She could not stop it from coming. Her body would not respond to it as something that she could have stopped, and would not try to flinch away from it.

All around her, most—not all, but most—of her classmates did not seem to feel the same way as her. There were a few grim faces, a couple of worried faces, but most of them seemed optimistic, or, at the very least, there was no apprehension in their obvious boredom. Whatever _they_ were expecting to happen, it was clear that they were not expecting comprehensive humiliation in front of all of their classmates. Marianne could only suppose that _they_ had done things correctly, that they had sought the help of the other combat instructors or that they had actually been able to make sense of what they had read in the books in the library, or that they had been paying proper attention when Professor Melusine demonstrated how to properly wield weapons other than the ones they had originally gravitated towards and that they had absorbed the lessons, even if they were not originally meant for them, well enough to build on them.

The idea that she was the only one who was certain to experience comprehensive humiliation tonight, while most of her other classmates would experience nothing of the sort, really should have been enough to put some panic into Marianne’s blood. But there was already enough clinging to Marianne’s blood to start with. There was no room for panic in her blood when her blood already carried such a heavy burden. Marianne could only grimace when Professor Melusine appeared at the doors, and set the butt of her lance more firmly against the ground.

Professor Melusine went down the lines slowly, stopping before each student and prompting them to demonstrate what they had learned since she had given them this assignment. Some of the students were eager—Annette and Caspar seemed positively giddy to demonstrate their knowledge. Some were composed—when Professor Melusine reached Hubert, he merely nodded before going into some exercises with the lance he had picked up before Marianne could get to it (Marianne caught herself watching, even though she shouldn’t, trying to absorb anything she could at the last moment, though she knew just how little good it would do her, and sure enough, it did absolutely nothing; Marianne could follow Hubert’s movements, but she could not translate them to her own body). There were some who clearly did not want to be here or did not want to be handling weapons, like Hilda and Linhardt, but even they clearly knew what they were doing; Professor Melusine was stern enough that there were few here who were at all interested in doing something that ran the risk of _deliberately_ courting her wrath.

And then, there was Marianne.

There was a part of her that thought—not thought, _knew_ —that this was inevitable. Someone like her was doomed to fail at everything she did, except by sheer, random chance. If Marianne succeeded at something, it was not due to her own efforts, but to chance, or to the Goddess taking pity on her, however accursed her blood might have been. And yet, there was some shame to be found as well, something that really should not have been there if this was all inevitable.

Her blood was cursed, and thus, the chances of Marianne ever succeeding at something was unlikely, to say the least. But that did not mean that she liked going about her life disappointing people. That did not mean that there were not times when she wished that she could have found a way to succeed. Praise was not something she had heard in… It had been a while. She avoided her adoptive father, honestly. She did not want to pass her luck on to him, and they… They saw the world very differently. There were few points, so very few points, where they saw the world through eyes that were even remotely similar, let alone the same. Marianne had given him few opportunities for situations where praise would have even been an _option_ , let alone something that might naturally have flowed from his lips.

Praise was not for her, not really. That did not mean that there were not times when Marianne found, to her surprise, that she hungered for it. Everyone wanted praise sometimes, she supposed, and even knowing that it simply wasn’t something that would ever come to her, she could not simply stop wanting it.

She certainly wasn’t going to be getting any this afternoon, considering just how little progress she had made with the lance since she had been given this assignment.

Eventually, Professor Melusine made her way to where Marianne stood in her line, holding her lance like someone who had no idea what to do with it, no matter how many times she had taken one up when she was here by herself. Professor Melusine’s slate blue eyes lingered on Marianne’s stance and her tight grip on the shaft of the glance for a long moment before she nodded to Marianne for her to begin.

It went…

It went exactly as Marianne expected. The only thing that did _not_ go as she expected was that she did not fumble the training lance so badly as to drop it during her mockery of a demonstration, and even that was a near thing.

By the end of it, all Marianne could do was stand, red-faced, staring down at her shoes and mumbling an apology that she was not entirely certain she’d even managed to say aloud, she kept her voice to such a small whisper. The lance felt heavier than ever in her hands. Her clothes felt as if they were lined with lead, rather than the horsehair her training clothes had actually been lined with in order to soften the blows of a sparring opponent’s weapons as much as possible.

Marianne had watched Professor Melusine… scold? No, scold wasn’t the right word for it. There was never enough anger in her voice for ‘scolding’ to really be the right word for it. Marianne had watched Professor Melusine admonish students for dereliction before. She never raised her voice when she did so, but the intensity of her gaze and the intensity of her tone had always more than made up for it, to the point that Marianne, even though she had never been on the receiving end of these admonishments herself and had been doing her best not to stare too obviously while they were going on, still felt herself wilting a little bit.

They were the words of a trained mercenary. That, she thought, was the worst of it, the real reason why everyone, every last student in the Officers Academy, even Hilda who wasn’t terribly interested in taking any of this seriously and Leonie who wasn’t interested in taking _Professor Melusine_ seriously, wilted like a flower put under the baking heat of the desert sun in midsummer. Professor Melusine knew better than any of them what it would take for them to be successful on the battlefield. Professor Melusine knew better than any of them what it would take for them to _survive_ on the battlefield. She knew these things better than any of the students of the Officers Academy, even if she had only a scant few years on her students (and Marianne thought that Professor Melusine might actually be younger than Mercedes, though she had never been able to confirm that suspicion herself, and she wasn’t about to ask directly in order to find out), and when Professor Melusine said that you were falling short of what you would need to be successful and to _survive_? Well, she did not need to shout. She did not need to glower or snarl. She did not need even to speak in a particularly scathing tone. The weight of your inadequacies was made clear to you with just a few quiet words from her.

Marianne was already well-acquainted with her inadequacies. As she continued to stare down at her shoes, she thought that no matter what Professor Melusine said to her, it wouldn’t be anything new. Her inadequacies whispered to her when she laid her head down to sleep. Someone who knew not what Marianne heard in the dark watches of the night could not possibly find anything new to say to her.

There was no admonishment that Professor Melusine could have given Marianne that would have been enough to shake her, nothing that would have been enough to jar her. An offer for her to be criticized in the privacy of an office or an empty classroom, away from the eyes and ears of her classmates, that would have been appreciated, if rather more generous than Marianne deserved after her own comprehensive failure to seek the aid that would have allowed her to perform even remotely competently. The offer would have been more generous than Marianne deserved, and thus, she was not expecting it. She had never known Professor Melusine to take a student into the privacy of an office or empty classroom to admonish them for clear and present dereliction before.

No admonishment would have been surprising. Perhaps cognizant of that, Professor Melusine chose to do something truly shocking instead.

“You show promise,” Professor Melusine told her, her typically soft voice even softer than usual. “You lack confidence, but you do show promise. If you seek out appropriate help, you could be as good with a lance as you are with a sword.”

Now, _now_ , Marianne could feel her heart begin to pound in her chest, could feel her pulse race and her blood thump sickly-fast through her veins. More than that, the ground seemed to be… shifting. The earthen floor of the training grounds was not quite as sturdy as stone, certainly, but she had never known it to shift like this. Now, now, she could feel it shifting as if under the influence of a weak earthquake. Or maybe that was just her legs wobbling. Maybe that was not the earth moving, but her. Her body was weak enough that it could certainly have been her.

It begged a response. Marianne wanted to say ‘thank you,’ but she could not form the words, for no matter how praise made her _feel_ , she could not reconcile how praise made her feel when she knew, logically, that it made absolutely no _sense_. There was no reason why she should be given praise. She had not done anything praiseworthy. She had not done anything that should have won her anything but the criticism given to a lazy student who had not done as her instructor had asked.

It begged a response. Professor Melusine should not be praising her. Whatever Marianne had done that had somehow tricked her into believing that she was more competent than she actually was, Marianne must clear up the misconception, and the quicker, the better. As she was, she could not possibly be pleasing to the Goddess, but Marianne knew that the Goddess would like someone like her who was also a _liar_ even less. If she could not be good, she could at least be _honest_.

It begged a response, so _say_ something.

Marianne jerked her head up—the movement must look so mechanical, for it certainly _felt_ mechanical, but so long as she was able to say what must be said, so long as she was able to disabuse Professor Melusine of any notion she might have of Marianne’s competence, it did not matter if Marianne looked as if she had been replaced by some sort of clockwork automaton. “I… No, that’s not…”

She could think of nothing else to say, nothing else that would unravel itself into something comprehensible in her mind, and Marianne could do naught but bite her lip until she tasted blood, and shake her head over and over again.

What Professor Melusine thought of such a display, she did not let rise to the surface of her pale, doll-like mask of a face. She merely waited for Marianne to stutter herself out, before going on, in as just as soft a voice as before, “You do need to practice more with the lance. I believe also that you would profit from attending regular sessions with Seteth or Gilbert.” More firmly, “A promise cannot be fulfilled without putting work into it. A promise unfulfilled is a promise that has come to nothing. But you do show promise, and I do not think that it would take as much work as you seem to believe to unlock it.”

And with that, she moved on to the student standing on Marianne’s right-hand side—Ignatz, who smiled shakily and held out his sword as if trying to ward off some sort of invisible monster with it—and, for the moment, at least, paid Marianne no more mind.

It…

That…

Marianne shook her head, running her tongue over the little wound she had left in her lower lip, wincing at the taste of copper that bloomed on her tongue. That made no sense. That made absolutely no sense. When she held a lance in her hands she felt like she was holding something that could at any moment turn into a venomous snake that would no doubt strike out against her for the threat and the insult of using it as a weapon. When she held a lance in her hands, Marianne did not feel like _anyone_ who understood what she should be using it for. She just felt like a clumsy little child, playing at being something that she could never be. How she had managed to trick such a renowned mercenary into believing otherwise, she had absolutely no idea.

Well, Professor Melusine was an intelligent, observant woman. She would clearly learn the error of her line of thought soon enough, especially if this training session went the way all of the other training sessions with Professor Melusine had gone thus far.

Marianne had been close to the end of the lines of students that had assembled for inspection today. There weren’t too many left after her, and after that, Professor Melusine came to stand before them, and when she opened her mouth, Marianne could only suck in a deep breath through her nose, because _yes_ …

“Pair off with another student.”

It had come time to spar.

Marianne watched helplessly as the typical pairs formed around her. Ferdinand and Lorenz gravitated to one another almost by magnetism. Mercedes and Annette quickly sought each other; Dorothea caught Edelgard’s eye almost immediately; Caspar latched onto Linhardt, even as Linhardt tried to drift off into the shadows where he could have been overlooked. There were an even number of students in the Officers Academy, and unless an odd number of them were ill or injured or otherwise unable to spar, a student was always guaranteed to be paired off against another student. Marianne had found herself one of the last two students looking for a sparring partner more than once before. She _did_ try to avoid drawing attention to herself, after all, and when she found herself one of two students who had not been paired off and the other student looking frantically around for the one who would be their partner and managing to overlook her for several moments before finally they spotted her, well, it would seem that Marianne’s efforts had been successful.

Marianne tried to avoid drawing attention to herself, and thus, she often wound up paired off against a student who hadn’t been able to claim as a partner the student they had really _wanted_ , paired off against a student who hadn’t really wanted to be sparring against _her_. Marianne could understand that; she typically tried to apologize, though it was less common for her current sparring partner to understand _why_ she was apologizing to them. And that was just it, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just because she avoided drawing attention to herself that she was often one of the last students looking for a sparring partner.

No, Marianne’s incompetence was not so easily hidden as all that. She had never tried to hide it, not really. Concealment of incompetence was a kind of deception in its own right, a deception that would surely offend the Goddess once she became aware of it—and it would not take her _long_ , now would it? Marianne was already carrying out one massive deception, and on top of the consequences with the Goddess, there were more temporal concerns to consider. (Her adoptive father had never confided in her if he intended to tell the young men he had looked at as potential husbands for her that she had a Crest before they were saying their wedding vows, and nor if he intended to tell them just _which_ Crest she bore. Marianne could imagine, sometimes, how any nameless, faceless husband of hers would react if they found out only after they had been bound to her that her blood was tainted and there was every chance that any child they had together would share her taint, share in the misfortunes that had befallen her and her father. Eventually, she was able to make herself _stop_ imagining it.) She could not afford to add other deceptions to the top of it, and thus, she made no secret of her own lack of competence. Her classmates were all decently intelligent—you had to be considerably better than average to get into the Officers Academy, at least in most cases—and they had easily picked up on the signals that she sent to them. It was a rare occasion indeed when someone actively sought Marianne out for sparring with. For the most part, Marianne thought it might be down to pity.

She did not particularly want pity. Someone like Marianne could not really afford the price of pride, and it had been long enough since she had last let pride hold sway over her that it no longer really felt natural under her skin. Nevertheless, she did occasionally feel the stirrings of pride within her, and when pride could stir itself below her skin, it whispered to her that she should not go seeking pity. Pity would make her too soft to navigate a world hostile to one of tainted blood. Pity would soften her skin and let the taint that polluted her blood seep out and poison the soil on which she stood. Pity was not for her.

So Marianne resigned herself to that same situation this afternoon, of everyone darting around looking for sparring partners while she, in the process of avoiding drawing attention to herself, managed at last to come to the point where she would accept as her partner the one other student who had been unable to find this afternoon anyone who was willing to spar with them, who’d not already selected another partner. As long as she did not wind up with a training partner who too obviously resented the fact that they would be sparring against her, she had nothing to complain about.

Someone tapped Marianne’s shoulder.

Then again, this training session was constantly determined to surprise her.

When Marianne craned her neck to look, her face flushed hot to see Ingrid staring back at her, an inquisitive look flashing in her green eyes. Was this the moment, had the moment at last arrived when Ingrid would finally demand an answer for the time Marianne had just stared at her while she was training instead of doing any training of her own? Or had Ingrid perhaps noticed Marianne skulking in her hiding spots outside the doors of the training grounds when she had finally emerged from them herself, and was this the moment of confrontation related to _that_? Or had Marianne’s own unsettled sleep at night been disrupting Ingrid’s sleep in the room next to her own? Marianne would not be surprised if the latter was the case, for there were many nights when she did not realize just how much she had been pacing until her legs began to ache from the constant strain of movement, and she could only imagine how _loud_ she was being when she paced like that.

She pushed an apology onto her tongue, ready to push it out of her mouth the moment it became clear that it would be needed, and only the reminder that people tended not to like it when someone just blurted out an apology before they had even made clear what it was that they felt the other person should be apologizing _for_ kept it behind her teeth, at least for now. Best to see what this was about, first.

“Would you like to spar with me?” Ingrid asked her, and the world that had been set to shaking by something so unexpected as _praise_ began to tremble just a little more violently.

Marianne… needed a moment, actually. She _had_ watched Ingrid, both at her exercises by herself, and here in the training grounds during the sessions shared by all three houses. It had been difficult not to watch Ingrid, at times. (Difficult not to watch her, at most times.) To put it shortly, Ingrid was not the sort of person Marianne would have expected to come seeking _her_ out as a sparring partner, not even in pity. Ingrid, she had gotten the impression, did not display her pity in such ways. Ingrid, Marianne was certain, did not go seeking sparring partners who could provide her with no challenge whatsoever.

Needless to say, Marianne needed a moment, because this _made no sense_.

Marianne was so thrown by the request that all she could say in response was “Yes.”

At that, Ingrid smiled at her, and Marianne’s stomach fluttered like she was about to be sick. (The frequency of the fluttering matched the trembling of the earth around her—or the trembling of her body, if that be the case.) It was, at least, a normal smile, a smile that rose only a little way past the bounds of strict politeness, and the fact that it was such a normal smile made it a little easier for Marianne to deal with.

It was a nice smile. Marianne had never been looking at Ingrid’s face when she smiled, not once before. She had caught sight of some of her other classmates smiling, but never Ingrid, and she had never thought to wonder…

It was a nice smile. Marianne had never noticed that before. It wasn’t perfectly curated like Hilda’s or Dorothea’s to be as widely-appealing as possible (at least, Marianne thought that that was going on with their smiles; Dorothea having been a performer and Hilda having spent the years cultivating expert status in wrapping family members around her little finger certainly suggested a _need_ for curating the perfect smile in both of them), but it was a nice smile. It was a smile that tried to encourage Marianne to let the tension out of her shoulders, even if it couldn’t quite succeed in its aims.

Marianne would continue thinking about the smile until late into the night, for reasons that did not quite make sense to her, but for now, it was not her greatest concern. No, her greatest concern was the wooden training sword in Ingrid’s hand, held with much more obvious confidence and _competence_ than Marianne held her lance. For the Kingdom was a martial land, was it not, and even if the Kingdom rarely allowed their noble girls to battle—certainly not noble girls who were also underage—that martial land was harsh enough that training was still to be had, even for those not intended for the battlefield.

Marianne had marked, every single time she had had occasion to catch sight of Ingrid at her training, the fact that she had clearly had formal training, and that she had clearly had formal training for a long time since before she had come to the Academy. She had marked, many times, the power in Ingrid’s limbs and the surety of her movements. There had been a fluidity to them that had been entrancing, but Marianne had never mistaken the reality of what was behind them.

Humiliation had not found her earlier. It was making up for that mistake now.

“That’s good,” Ingrid replied, her smile… It wasn’t that it widened or lessened, more that it shifted, though in what way, Marianne couldn’t really say. “I usually pair off with Felix or Sylvain, but…” Her mouth twisted into something that most definitely was _not_ a smile, though saying what it actually was was giving her about as much trouble as trying to decipher the exact quality of the earlier smile. “…We’re having some disagreements right now. You didn’t look like you had anyone particularly you wanted to spar with.” She peered intently into Marianne’s face. “Do you?”

“O-oh…” Marianne picked at her sleeve cuff. “Oh, umm, no. No, there wasn’t anyone in particular.”

Marianne had never considered anyone she would particularly like to spar with, if she had the freedom to go sparring with whoever she liked. She’d never contemplated it before. Whether or not it would have been Ingrid, she couldn’t have said. She really didn’t know.

“Good,” Ingrid repeated, though in a considerably more pensive tone. For a moment she seemed as if lost in her own thoughts, but then she straightened, her expression clearing up. “I warn you—“ but her tone was far more jocular than warning “—I won’t go easy on you.”

Marianne did not bother telling her that even if she had gone easy on her, she still would have won the match handily. Ingrid was a smart girl. She would figure that out on her own, soon enough. At least with wooden training weapons and heavily-padded training clothes, Marianne was not too likely to be badly hurt, not unless one of Ingrid’s blows went wildly off-course. She would likely still be quite sore when she lied down to sleep tonight, though.

They found a corner of the training grounds not already in use (Ingrid had had the sense to pick a corner no one was standing too close near), close to where the archery targets were kept when they weren’t in use. Marianne’s lance felt no less awkward and cumbersome in her hands than it had before, though now the awkwardness was compounded by the grim certainty of what was about to happen.

Ingrid offered a shallow bow, and Marianne nodded jerkily in response. They brandished their weapons, and made ready.

As Ingrid had promised, she did not go easy on Marianne. And here, at last, was something that had gone exactly as Marianne had expected it to.

Namely, with her being laid out on her back in less than ten seconds.

The impact had been less than gentle, but once Marianne was laid out on her back, her lance landing about four feet away, she found it wasn’t so bad. She had landed with her hand under one of the skylights, and she had a good view of the faint bronze cast beginning to creep in at the edges of blue sky. There was a part of Marianne that would have liked to just stay on the floor and stare up through the glass at the sky, watching what variegated hues it took on today as sunset took hold. There was a certain safety in inaction, in the knowledge that so long as she wasn’t doing anything, she could bring down no misfortune, either on herself or on others.

But the world would not let Marianne just lie there, unmoving and unnoticed. The world, however little of a place it might have had for someone like Marianne, was not done with her yet, not today. Besides, if she lied on the ground for too long, she’d wind up getting in _somebody’s_ way. If not her classmates right now, then whoever was sent to clean the training grounds later, after they were closed to the students.

Also, sleeping here would likely leave Marianne with a sorer back than usual.

Stiffly, the parts of her that had landed most heavily sounding a rousing protest at the sudden movements, Marianne worked to at least sit up. The many nights of poor sleep had taken a toll on her, one she was only noticing now; once she was in such a position, it was difficult to rouse herself from it properly. If Marianne wished not to be a total disappointment, it was plain that she would have to find a way to rest more consistently, but easier said than done, and…

“Are you alright?”

And if the world wasn’t going to leave Marianne be, Ingrid certainly wasn’t.

Marianne nodded her head, studiously avoiding Ingrid’s gaze. She would have seen too much in it, would have given away too much if she exposed her face to it. It was better this way, to never engage directly, never come face to face…

Marianne let out a high-pitched squeak as a hand closed around her right elbow and hauled her swiftly, if rather clumsily, to her feet. No face to face, but hand to arm didn’t seem to be something she could avoid so easily…

“Did _that_ hurt you?” There was no mistaking the anxious undertone permeating Ingrid’s voice. “I’m sorry; everyone tells me I don’t know my own strength, but I never see it for myself until—“

“I’m fine,” Marianne interjected, if only to do something that stood even the smallest chance of banishing the strangeness that was somebody else apologizing to _her_. It didn’t feel right, grating incessantly against her skin, and anything she could do to rid herself of it, she would. “You didn’t hurt me.”

“That’s… good.” And though Ingrid’s tone did not sound at all certain of that, Marianne did not lift her head to check for herself. What was that supposed to change? “I suppose I should ask you if you want help next time, shouldn’t I?”

Marianne shrugged, mumbling something indecipherable even to herself. She had no idea if there was even going to be a next time. There was every chance that they would never spar against each other again; if Ingrid had healed whatever rift had formed between her and Felix and Sylvain by the time the three houses were called to this place again, she might never even look at Marianne as a potential sparring partner again. Perhaps that would be best. Perhaps it would be best.

(The part of Marianne that yet remembered that Ingrid had come to her before the extremity of having no other options at all wondered if it would be best, after all. There were many things that Marianne should not want, but she could not stop herself from wanting them. Whether or not she could reconcile the things she wanted and could not want with the fact that she must put them down and abandon them, she never really knew.)

The difference between them was obvious, obvious enough that Ingrid did not ask Marianne if she wanted to go again. With that, Marianne would have thought that Ingrid would have gone to find someone else who had been sparring against a classmate who had not wanted to go for a second round, and who Professor Melusine would not make go for a second round. Whoever Lysithea had paired up against this time was likely a strong contender; it was not for lack of enthusiasm that Lysithea rarely managed to last more than one round when it came to sparring, but the fact that she didn’t lack for enthusiasm hardly made up for the fact that she had easily the least stamina of any of the students of the Officers Academy. Professor Melusine had marked it early on, and rarely pressed her to go for a second round, though she did often pull Lysithea aside for extra training outside of the sessions with the three houses here all together.

Marianne couldn’t make Lysithea out in the throng of students, though she had caught sight of her long, brittle white hair as she was entering the training grounds earlier. Lysithea… was not prone to picking sparring partners who were likely to go easy on her. Most likely, her first sparring session was already over, and Marianne just couldn’t see her where she was stood or sat. Lysithea might insist on a second round. She did that, sometimes; it was difficult to mistake her strident tones when she was insisting upon it, tones that were made all the more unmistakable for how strident she managed to make them even as she was wheezing so hard it must have been difficult for her to even _breathe_ , let alone _talk_. Lysithea might insist on a second round, but even if she had picked Caspar or Raphael as a sparring partner, her sparring partner was unlikely to be eager to go for a second round with her, considering the state she was normally in after the _first_ round.

So. Lysithea’s sparring partner would be uneager to engage in a second round of sparring with her. Lysithea would still be insisting upon it, if she had any breath in her lungs with which to insist, and stridency would quickly turn to anger, as she assumed that her sparring partner was bowing out from a second round out of pity, rather than alarm over the state she had fallen into. Lysithea would insist angrily now, and her sparring partner would, unless it was someone like Ignatz or maybe Bernadetta, refuse to give in to her insistent demands for a second round—and at this point, even Ignatz or Bernadetta would probably have kept right on refusing her. If Professor Melusine had not already intervened, she soon would, and Lysithea would find herself sitting on the sidelines for the rest of the training session. Her partner would be at loose ends, looking for someone else to spar with, if their experience sparring with Lysithea had not put them off of the idea entirely for the afternoon, and before long, they would see Ingrid, who would no doubt be eager to go off to spar with them. After all, Ingrid might see that she wasn’t going to learn anything real today sparring against someone she could beat so handily, but that didn’t mean she would be content with coming away from the training session having learned _nothing_ profitable.

Ingrid herself must be a desirable sparring partner for anyone who actually wanted a _partner_ , rather than someone who would fall to the ground in thirty seconds or less. Soon enough, someone would come up to Ingrid wanting to spar with her, and Ingrid would have been well within her rights to leave Marianne behind her and go off with them. Well within her rights, and likely following her own inclinations as far as they would lead her. Soon enough, Marianne would be standing at the edge of the training grounds alone. Soon enough.

“Hmm, Mercedes is doing better with that sword than I thought she would,” Ingrid remarked suddenly, her lips pursed in a pensive line.

Marianne tried not to jolt at the words that sounded so close to her ear, so suddenly, and in the wake of trying not to jolt, all she could do was, before she could really convince herself not to, search around the throng of students in the training grounds until she spotted Mercedes. She was sparring against a rather harried-looking Dimitri, who was holding his own training sword with considerably more skill than Mercedes herself. Mercedes…

Marianne tried not to judge others too harshly. Who was _she_ to judge them, after all, she who carried such tainted blood within her veins and such thoughts as what she bore within her mind? But she _did_ know how to hold a sword properly, and what Mercedes was doing… wasn’t that.

If what Mercedes was doing with that wooden training sword was an improvement over whatever Ingrid had seen her doing with it earlier, then Marianne could not _imagine_ what Mercedes had been doing with it earlier. What Mercedes was doing with that sword now bore about as close kin to proper handling as what Marianne had been doing with her lance just now was to proper handling of a lance, whatever Professor Melusine might think. But Marianne would not judge her. It was not her place to judge her.

Whether Ingrid had actually been expecting Marianne to respond to that, whether she was expecting Marianne to provide commentary on Mercedes’s handling of a sword, Marianne did not know. Perhaps Ingrid was just one of those people who liked to talk to fill the silence. Marianne had known people like that. Some of them, she had been…

No, she was not going to think about that. Not here.

“Marianne…” Marianne had not wanted to be sucked into either conversation nor into dangerous lines of thought, but there were some things she was helpless against. The quality of the pause in Ingrid’s voice following the way Marianne’s name had rolled off of her tongue, that was something she was helpless against; it had struck her like a bolt out of the blue, cut deep under her skin like a freshly-honed knife.

She was helpless against it, and thus, she did what she’d thought so hazardous before: she looked directly into Ingrid’s face.

Ingrid’s eyebrows rose up at that, and small wonder. Marianne could well imagine what sort of impression she gave off, especially considering that she had on occasion received _advice_ about the sort of impression she gave off. (The tone in which this advice was delivered to her… varied. She had never known it to be unwarranted, but she did often mark the difference in the tone.) She could well imagine how anyone might be surprised to find her suddenly looking up from the ground into their face, especially if there was nothing forcing her to do it. Given how some people sometimes reacted to her suddenly staring into their faces, Marianne had another reason entirely to avoid looking too directly or too swiftly at them, one that had nothing to do with any power of hers to bring ill fortune down upon them. Though given what she saw reflected in their eyes, Marianne wondered sometimes if the ability to inspire fraught dreams was close enough kin to her despised ability to bring others ill fortune. The distorted planes of _face_ certainly seemed like something she would find in the choking mists of a nightmare, rather than anything that should ever be a feature of a waking world.

Ingrid’s eyebrows were rising up towards her hairline, because Marianne was looking her way. Looking at her more directly than she looked at most people, if she was not in the grips of some emotion very, _very_ strong. And now that Marianne was looking, she was not entirely certain how to _stop_. If she ducked her head again, so suddenly, it would be marked, and Ingrid would likely take offense. It was not Marianne’s intention to give offense. She should not have looked up in the first place. She should not have focused her attention so intently…

It was too late now. She was looking. She would have to go on looking.

And as long as Marianne was looking… it was a pleasant face to be looking at. Not the idealized female beauty of the paintings in the richest of castles in the Alliance, but then, Marianne had never had the slightest glimpse of a woman who could be said to live up to those ideals. She was not certain that any such existed, at least not on this earth (The Goddess must meet the ideal, and perhaps Saint Seiros and Saint Cethleann as well, but none of their kind walked this earth any longer). There was good health shining in Ingrid’s face, in her clear, bright eyes and her smooth, unblemished skin, fair with a rosy tint beneath, rather than any pallor that could have spoken or frailty or frequent ill health (Lysithea came to mind once more). Strands of golden hair were coming loose of a braid that never seemed to be tied quite tight enough to hold them all in for the whole day, and there was not a trace of brittleness to be found in the stray locks of hair slipping past Ingrid’s shoulders.

She had a face that Marianne could not quite stop herself looking at. Later, she would tell herself that it had been jealousy of someone who had managed to weather whatever slings and arrows life had thrown her way considerably better than Marianne herself. Later, she would try to fashion it into a self-reproach, an example of what person she could be, if she was more obedient and less disappointing. In the moment, it was nothing of the sort. In the moment, Marianne had no conception of what it was.

And the moment had been dragging on for entirely too long, though Marianne did not mark as much at first. She marked it only when Ingrid, who had been staring at her with a strange, abstracted expression, suddenly cleared her throat and straightened perhaps a little past what could have been comfortable—Marianne did not think someone’s spine was supposed to be quite as straight.

“I…” Ingrid frowned, seemingly testing her words on her tongue before going on, “…I have noticed that you’re quite good with a sword.”

A sickly heat raced up Marianne’s neck to bathe her face and ears. “I… I know a little.” Not as much as a knight would have known. Not enough to serve her well on a battlefield, no matter what her instructors might have thought. Not enough to serve her well anywhere outside of a fencing arena, and it had been so long since she had last fenced just for the sake of fencing that some, if not all, of her fencing instincts must have by now gone to rust, enough to see her defeated easily.

No, she couldn’t claim to know very much. She had only just begun to progress to more advanced techniques when… when it had happened. Marianne could not claim to know very much at all.

“I think you know more than a _little_ ,” Ingrid replied skeptically, though fortunately she did not attempt to refuse Marianne with any examples—such would have been at best confusing (for Marianne would never understand how anyone was able to see true competence in a place where none in fact existed), and at worst humiliating (For Marianne could not see how any attempts, if they were not born of confused memories, could have ever been genuine). Instead of rooting around for examples, Ingrid turned her attention briefly to the throng before directing it back onto Marianne. “It’s clear that your training began before you came to the Officers Academy.”

No examples, but there was a question buried within, one that Marianne thought she knew the shape of, though she would much rather she didn’t. As long as it was not asked directly, Marianne thought she would rather behave as if it did not exist. It would be rude to assume that she knew exactly what was going through Ingrid’s mind, anyways.

“But then, that’s true of most of us, isn’t it?” Ingrid sounded at the moment more like she was musing to herself, than if she was trying to prompt Marianne into speech. “The world being what it is, it has been prudent for most of us to at least learn the basics, so that we can at least travel without having to worry unduly about the perils on the roads.”

Marianne traveled little, and when she did, her adoptive father made very certain that she traveled under sufficient guard that she would never need to raise a hand in her own defense, not unless she was highly insistent to those guards who had been ordered to keep her as far away from the danger as possible that she stand with them. Since her parents’ death and her subsequent adoption, Marianne had never traveled anywhere without at least ten armed guards surrounding her at all times, and that number only went up if she left Edmund territory. Marianne could not say that her experience of travel matched what Ingrid seemed to think of the activity. At all. But then, the Kingdom was a very different place from the Alliance, even if Marianne’s home was a border territory. She supposed it made sense that they did not match, not at all.

“And it shows, doesn’t it?” Ingrid was definitely musing to herself, now—at least, in Marianne’s admittedly limited experience of Ingrid, this definitely _seemed_ like her musing to herself. “Most of our classmates from the Empire grew up far from any battlefields, and yet, they all know something of combat; even Bernadetta shows herself competent if you put a bow in her hands.”

Something scratched at Marianne’s tongue, prompting her to say, however unwise it might have been to engage, “Saint Seiros told us that we must expect threats from the unfaithful wherever we might go.”

Ingrid nodded. “That was a topic that came up often in services in the chapel when I was a child.” She sucked in a deep breath that whistled slightly through momentarily gritted teeth. “More often, after the king was slain. I have always been advised of the need for vigilance, of the need to be ready for whatever might come to me. I… I am glad that Professor Melusine agrees with that point. I don’t think we can be _too_ ready for what is coming for us.”

Marianne had nothing to say to that. Even if her home territory was a border territory, the situation in her part of the Alliance was very different from the situation in any part of the Kingdom (Her adoptive father liked to stay informed, and was equally fond of ensuring that she stayed informed, as well). She had encountered little but failure in this endeavor to learn the use of a second weapon, but that was her own affair, and her own fault; it had nothing to do with Ingrid. There was naught that she could say.

“But I probably sound paranoid to you.”

 _This_ was certainly something that prompted her for a reply. Marianne held herself stiffly, careful not to meet Ingrid’s gaze directly as she mumbled out, “Oh, no, you don’t sound paranoid to me…”

Whether Ingrid was convinced by that, Marianne could not tell. It had been such a rote response, and Ingrid was a quick and clever girl (would have to be, just to be here); it was entirely possible that she could sense that it _was_ a rote response, sense that it had been an empty gesture to soothe her without any real thought put behind it. And sure enough, Marianne could not make heads or tails of Ingrid’s tone as she replied, “You might try telling Sylvain or Mercedes that. They both think that I need to relax a little more.” Her mouth curled into something that looked like a grimace, though it was a little harsher than Marianne thought the expression could typically claim. “You would _think_ Sylvain would know better, considering the troubles that plague his own home territory, but I’ve never been able to convince him.”

Once again, Marianne had nothing to say to that. She could not say what thoughts were in Sylvain’s mind that justified his own more relaxed disposition, compared to Ingrid’s. She could not say what went through Ingrid’s mind, that made her think that Sylvain needed to be more vigilant. It was not for her to say. Not for her to say at all.

Beside her, Ingrid heaved a deep sigh. “I think the session will be over, soon. I heard Professor Melusine telling Professor Hanneman that she wanted to give us a little more of our afternoon today, so we could do our assignments and have more time to study for our exams. Erm…”

Now, Ingrid was staring down at her feet. Marianne could not help but mark it; though she did not go out of her way to look at Ingrid, no more than she went out of her way to look at anyone, she had never seen Ingrid stare down at her feet in such a way. Such a self-conscious gesture did not seem at all like her.

Well, Marianne could hardly judge her. And she could remember many times when she, feeling similarly self-conscious, had been rushed towards speech by her conversation partner. Such had never done anything to make her more comfortable speaking; it had only ever succeeded in making her tongue-tied. If Marianne could not keep herself from being a disappointment, she could at least refrain from being _cruel_. She could wait. She could wait long enough for Ingrid to speak on her own.

Not that, once she heard what Ingrid had to say, Marianne would not wish that Ingrid had been too tongue-tied to say it all clearly.

Ingrid offered her a smile, like someone would offer a horse a smile that they were afraid might flee from them before they had the chance to come up and pet its head. It would have been a nice smile, a smile like a gentle hand upon her arm, had it not been for what Ingrid said next: “…I was curious. Where is it that you learned how to use a sword?”

She could not have known. Those few whom had spoken to Marianne of her adoptive father this year had all been under the impression, at least at first, that he was her father by blood as well as by law; it had taken Marianne’s clarifications for them to learn the truth. There was absolutely no way that Ingrid, a girl from another land altogether, a girl who was no doubt beset by many cares of her own and who would have had little to no reason to know much of anything of the family situation of a girl in a territory far from her own, could have known anything about what sort of ground she had just tread upon.

There was no way that Ingrid could have known. Marianne told herself that, and told herself that once, twice, three times more, and telling herself that over and over again could not make the question feel any less like a knife twisting in her gut, catching on her intestines with cruel and wicked purpose.

_I don’t want…_

It did not matter what Marianne wanted. What mattered was that she not burden others with her own troubles. Out of all of the things she was incapable of doing, she was capable of that much, at least.

She was capable, but still, the words dragged out of her mouth like barbed wire catching on her flesh: “It was my father.”

Marianne had not meant to burden Ingrid with her troubles, but she did not seem to have succeeded at that without signaling that something, whatever it might be, wasn’t right. Ingrid’s tone pitched high and tinny as she remarked: “Oh.” Ingrid tapped her wooden training sword against her leg, making ring out a surprisingly sharp tap-tap-tap, for all that it was wood striking against flesh shielded by layers of cloth. “Hmm. I… Umm… I heard what Professor Melusine said to you about your work with the lance.”

Of course she had. The training grounds were large, but sound carried, and the students were bid to stay silent while Professor Melusine was evaluating each of them in turn. It was impossible not to hear what she said when she gave her evaluation of each of the students’ progress, even considering how soft her voice was. The only way not to hear it would be to plug your ears with your hands, and who was going to go to all of that trouble? You would be marking yourself out as someone behaving oddly in front of all of your peers, and for absolutely no good reason, since Professor Melusine had never indicated (not in so many words, anyways), that she did not want the other students listening in as she evaluated the one.

Of course Ingrid had heard. Everyone had heard, and Ingrid had not been standing as far away from Marianne as had certain others of their classmates. She would have heard it better than certain others.

Ridiculous thing to wish for, but Marianne wished that no one had heard it at all. If Professor Melusine had offered her the chance to go over what she thought of Marianne’s progress in private, Marianne would have taken her up on it in a heartbeat. Anything to avoid having the others hear.

The other thing she might have wished for was not to be, for Ingrid soon made clear that she was not done. “Just so you know, I happen to agree with her. I mean, you could probably stand to practice more, but the same’s true of just about everyone here, including me. We could _all_ stand to practice more; the battlefield won’t be kind to us if we don’t. I…”

Ingrid could say what she liked, and Marianne knew she had no way of stopping her. She was _wrong_ , but she was entitled to her opinion. Marianne simply had no intention of validating it—or acknowledging it.

(She didn’t deserve—)

Meanwhile, Marianne was pioneering something she’d not expected to find herself pioneering. It was impossible not to hear someone talking at such close range, not unless your hearing was impaired in and of itself. But Marianne was finding that it was entirely possible not to comprehend anything that was being said to you at such a distance, if you were sufficiently distracted by something else. And she had found something amply distracting, indeed.

Her skills were not such that warranted such praise as what she had received this afternoon. She knew that. She thought about it, and kept thinking about it, and the thoughts echoed in her mind, and the echoes waxed in volume, growing loud enough that, even with Ingrid standing right next to her, though Marianne could hear the words spilling forth from her lips, she could not understand so much as a single syllable.

That was fitting.

-0-0-0-

Once upon a time, Marianne had been a girl who had given considerably less thought to curses and Crests and tainted blood. Once upon a time, she had lived a quiet life as a country noble, her parents lord and lady over their own small fief and no other, and Marianne’s only real care had been the scholar who occasionally appeared at their door to try and draw her father into harsh, whispered conversations that ended with her father white-lipped and shaking with anger, her mother’s brow creased with worry, and Marianne herself deeply confused. But though that was her only real care, it was not such a great care that it ever lingered in her memory for long after the scholar was escorted away from her parents’ estate. No, the man would come to linger in her memory _later_ , once she had become the primary target for his accusations and all of the attempts her adoptive father made to deter him made absolutely no difference to his determination—and given that her adoptive father was increasingly openly considering _violence_ to make him stay away, and even that was not enough to deter him, Marianne was not certain that there was _anything_ that she could do to be rid of her unwanted shadow, short of his dying before her (And even then, she considered sometimes—normally in nightmares—the idea that his ghost would follow her around in stead of mortal flesh).

Once upon a time, Marianne had been a girl who had had no true cares that could darken the sun in her eyes, had been a girl who thought nothing of curses and Crests and tainted blood, in spite of her father’s admonishments to never speak of their shared Crest to others. She had…

It would be a pretty story, she supposed, to be able to tell you that once upon a time, she had been a completely different girl. That she had once been bubbly and outgoing and consistently _cheerful_ , and that it was only tragedy that had rendered her the warped and inward-looking creature who now stood before you. It would be a pretty story, fit for a song, and Marianne could imagine how many singers would have envisioned the ending: true love breaks the spell of grief, true love magically restores her to the state she was before grief wove its first curse upon her.

The pretty story would be a _lie_ , but then, most pretty stories _were_ lies.

Even as a girl who thought little to nothing of curses and Crests and tainted blood, Marianne had still been quiet. Still been shy. Still inclined from time to time to morbid thoughts, though that morbidity had not been as intensely focused _inwards_ as it would later become. She was still recognizable, though you would perhaps have to squint a little to be sure.

In these before-times, before blood and death and grief and all the burdens of a cursed Crest and tainted blood settled themselves on Marianne’s shoulders like a leaden yoke, she had… You know, she had done things with her parents. They were hardly strangers to each other, especially considering that the fief that had been theirs was not a large one and there was rarely a need for either of Marianne’s parents to go too far away from the estate. Marianne had spent much of her time in the company of her parents. It was only natural that they had done things together.

Her mother had taught her to read and write and how to work with a needle, and if neither Marianne’s letters nor her stitches were particularly straight, her mother had never held it against her. _Not everything in this life can be perfect, my dear. Nothing in this life has any business being perfect. That which is perfect cannot change or grow, and where does that leave us?_

No, nothing in this life had any business being perfect, Marianne least of all. She could never have been perfect if she wanted to be, but if she could have at least been adequate…

But that was putting a particular line of thought further back in the past than where it belonged. It did not fit with the memory of her mother’s smiling face. To claim otherwise would have been something close to blasphemy.

Marianne’s father had taught her the names of the animals of this world, their secrets and their tongues. There was little in their speech that Marianne could imitate, but the one gift her Crest had given her that felt truly like a gift, the one and _only_ true gift, was that when she tried to listen, she could actually _hear_. The world was so much more alive to her, in those lonely places where almost everyone else would have claimed to hear only silence, and for that, Marianne was grateful. If she could be naught but a disappointment in the world of men, then at least outside of it she could _hear_.

Her father had taught her the sword also, as she had said.

It had been a game to them. The fief had been peaceful, and her father no warrior. There had never been any expectation from either of them that they would ever have to do battle, and thus, their training was not the training that the students of the Officers Academy underwent. It had borne little resemblance to such training.

It had been a game to them, and once upon a time, it had been a game that Marianne had greatly enjoyed. Whether or not it was a game that she had _excelled_ at was another matter; it was certainly well past the time when she could have gone to her father and asked him if there had ever been any matches that he had simply let her win. But excellence had not mattered to Marianne in those days, or else it had not mattered enough to her for the memory of it mattering to remain inside, years later.

It had just been… fun.

It had just been something Marianne did with her father.

Nowadays, it and everything like it was a reminder that her father was not here for her to fence with any longer.

It was a reminder of _why_.

Alone (so often alone, but more aggressively alone than usual), Marianne found herself in the training grounds once more. Why, she did not know, besides from the vague awareness that there would be other training sessions shared by all three houses and that there would be other opportunities to humiliate herself before a captive audience. But that was, as she said, a vague awareness, and not one that touched consciousness deeply.

She had picked out a training lance—the one she normally selected, rather than the one she had had earlier, when she had been too slow to prevent Hubert from picking it up first. You would think that the familiarity would make things easier to deal with. That was not to be, not at all.

She kept trying to make it into a sword in her hands. No, that was not what Marianne was doing, she realized after a long, unpleasant moment, not what she was doing at all.

Marianne was not trying to make the lance into a sword. She was still holding it the way she would hold a lance, even if she was not at all certain that that was the way she should _really_ be holding a lance. Marianne _knew_ how to hold a sword, and this certainly wasn’t how you were supposed to do it. You hold a sword like this, and you’re more likely to trip over it than actually land a blow against an opponent.

No, what Marianne was _actually_ trying to do was conjure an echo of her father’s voice that would have had more wisdom to it than an echo could ever claim.

Her stomach churned as she tried to push the desire down, tried over and over and over again to banish it from her heart. There was no _reason_ to. She had never seen her father hold a lance, not even once. There had been small tourneys in the neighboring territory from time to time, but her father had never participated, so he had never wielded a lance into battle, nor into sport. As far as Marianne knew, there was nothing her father could ever have taught her regarding the use of a lance.

There was nothing her father could have taught her of a lance, even if he was alive to teach her. Absolutely nothing. So why try to hear his voice where his voice could never be heard again?

She couldn’t do that… She couldn’t do this…

There was nothing he could…

There was nothing she could…

Marianne sucked a deep breath in, put her training lance back up, and walked out of the training grounds.

-0-0-0-

And Marianne did not return to the training grounds of her own will for several days. There were afternoon training sessions, of course, though none with all three of the houses present, and those could not be avoided without drawing comment or punishment down on herself. Marianne went to them, did absolutely nothing to distinguish herself from the rest, and avoided the training grounds at all other times. She could not bear it, could not bear it at all.

But she could not bear either the idea of humiliating herself before all of her classmates come the next shared training session, when Professor Melusine would no doubt wish to see how Marianne had progressed since the last time the professor had evaluated her. If she could display no progress at _all_ , though perhaps Professor Melusine would not admonish her in quite the same fashion as she had admonished those students who were clearly putting no effort into what they were doing at all, Marianne would still be exposed as having made no progress at all in front of all of her classmates.

They wouldn’t be _surprised_. No doubt, many of her classmates would be expecting that she had made no progress since the last shared training session. If they knew anything of her at all, no doubt they were not expecting _excellence_. Marianne wasn’t expecting excellence; how could any of them? But Marianne still shied away from the prospect of humiliation. She thought that anyone would, even those who were not weighed down by their own tainted blood. She was not unique. They wouldn’t be surprised, but that was not much consolation for her.

If there was any way that Marianne could avoid the humiliation of being exposed as having made no progress, any way that was within her own meager power, she would take it. The only thing that Marianne could grasp onto as a means of improving herself was the training grounds, and thus, to the training grounds she went.

Not gladly. Of course, not gladly. But she had to go.

Marianne sucked in a deep breath as she opened the doors, a breath that failed utterly to settle her but did at least put air back into her lungs, did at least make her feel a little less light-headed. She could not have it all, but if she could have just a little, if she could have just enough for her to get through the exercises she was trying to go through without fainting, it would be enough.

Marianne had gotten back to the library during mealtimes. She had _tried_ to make heads or tails of the books she had pulled out for instruction, though she understood it all little better now than she had the last time she had tried to read the book and make heads or tails of it _then_. Marianne was not sure how much more she had managed to learn, but she had at least _tried_ to learn something from it all, and now, she would see if she actually managed to retain any of the information at all.

Her hands shook as she pushed the doors open wide enough for her to slip inside. Marianne could feel the sweat forming on her skin, even though the day was mild and a brisk breeze battered against her body. There were noises coming from inside. She had to tell herself that it wasn’t her father’s voice (The stray thought had come upon her so suddenly, but once it was there, she had had so much trouble dislodging it from her mind).

She would not be alone. Marianne knew as much from the moment she opened the doors and heard noise coming from inside. If she was to fumble and trip her way through all of her exercises today, she would not have the grace of being able to do it in privacy. Her stomach churned at the thought, but there was no choice. She couldn’t wait for the training grounds to be completely empty, not if she wanted to have the slightest hope of making any progress at all. She would just have to weather this smaller humiliation, in order to avoid a greater humiliation later. If she could go through it without looking too much at whoever she was going to be sharing the training grounds with, if she could go through it without worrying that she might be sharing her luck with them, it would be enough. It _ought_ to be enough.

Marianne made the final push, and stepped inside.

She did not spot the other person in the training grounds—that there was only one soon became clear to her once she had stepped inside; there would have been considerably more echoes if Marianne was to be sharing the training grounds with a group—right away. Marianne had returned to what had always worked best for her, staring at the ground, the better to avoid accidentally meeting someone else’s eyes, and that typically restricted her range of vision quite a bit. She did her best to keep her _ears_ open, at least—if meeting someone’s gaze wasn’t enough to pass her luck on to them, knocking right into them by accident sounded a _lot_ more likely to pass her luck on; physical contact _would_ be the more ready means of transmission, wouldn’t it? Whoever it was she was sharing space with today was at the far end of the training grounds, beyond where Marianne could see with her gaze trained so firmly on the ground.

They did not call out to her, either. That much served to reassure her, at least somewhat. If they were so deeply absorbed in their training that they did not notice her entrance, perhaps Marianne could get all the way through the exercises she was going to at least _try_ out without interacting with them too much, or even at all. Perhaps she could get through this without even the small humiliation. Perhaps.

Marianne made her way over to the training racks, still avoiding looking towards the source of the noises at the far corner of the training grounds. The quieter she was, the more adamant she was about avoiding the notice of her sort-of companion here in the training grounds, the more likely it was that they would not notice her in here with them. The more likely it was that she would just be able to get through this in peace.

 _You haven’t learned much from that book though, have you? You still don’t know much._ _How much are you likely to learn from these exercises, when you still don’t know precisely what you should be doing with the lance? Isn’t it more likely that you’ll just flail about until you’re too tired to go any further? Isn’t failure more likely than success?_

Well, of course failure was more likely than success. For years now, years and years, failure had been far more likely than for success, with anything and everything Marianne did.

(She still wondered sometimes how it was that she had ever passed the entrance exams to enter the Officers Academy. She wondered sometimes, about her adoptive father, and if he hadn’t pulled more strings than just the strings he had pulled to curtail discussion regarding the possibility of her bearing a Crest. Her adoptive father thought…

Marianne’s adoptive father often told her that he felt that she had a future, beyond the narrow, shadowy visions of the future that Marianne could see for herself. Sometimes, he even told her that he felt there was a future for her that might involve something other than marriage. He was… He was a very intelligent man. That much had become obvious to Marianne within hours of meeting him, even though he had not been flaunting his intelligence at the time. He was a very intelligent, very canny man. But she could not follow his reasoning at all. Not in this. How he was supposed to see a future for her that involved anything that was not a burden, either to herself or whoever he eventually inflicted her upon as a wife, Marianne did not know.)

Failure was more likely than success. But though Marianne did not know how to avoid disappointment completely, she had found a way to try to stem the flow, at least for a little while. She was a disappointment. She did try not to be disobedient as well. The Goddess would not look kindly on her willful disobedience.

She selected her typical lance, and took up a spot far away from where the noises of one of her classmates exercising—well, it didn’t _sound_ like one of the knights, anyways—though not so close to the doors that she would have inevitably met the gaze of anyone who happened to come inside while she was still here. Marianne tried to hold the illustrations, the charts, and the diagrams in that book in her mind as she brandished her lance, tried to imitate the stances she had seen inked out for the benefit of the readers.

…If Marianne _had_ to pick another physical weapon, if Professor Melusine could not be content with magic and the sword for her, she would like it to be the lance. Truly, she would. The alternatives were so unpalatable for her that even if the lance was not acceptable on its own, she would have seized upon it anyways. Marianne wasn’t about to switch to the bow or the gauntlets or the axe now, not after she had already poured so much time into training, even if that training had gotten her close to nowhere.

The lance was the favored weapon of most who fought from either horseback or the back of a pegasus. Professor Melusine would not hear of any of them learning more about combat _from_ the back of a horse or a pegasus unless they had also put in the appropriate amount of time training with a lance. For these reasons, if no others, the lance was attractive to Marianne for reasons other than because the alternatives were so unattractive as they were. She _was_ trying.

Marianne was trying, and her attempts were heading towards the same conclusion as just about everything else she did, these days. Though she had studied the book as diligently as she could, the information just did not seem to have stuck in her head at all. She could not tell if she was holding the lance correctly, and she _knew_ she was not holding her body correctly; if she _was_ holding her body correctly, the lance would not have felt as awkward in her hands, even if she was still holding _it_ incorrectly.

She bit her lip, trying to restrain the long sigh that would most likely have alerted the other student to her presence. This was… She was trying. She _was_. But this wasn’t…

No, that would be dishonest. This was going exactly the way it should. For someone born to failure, someone born for disappointment, this was going precisely as it should. It was foolish to avoid admonition, foolish to avoid humiliation, foolish to avoid anything that was to be her natural lot. If her father couldn’t avoid it, how could she, how could she _possibly_ avoid—

“Marianne?”

Marianne started, her heart in her throat. The student with whom she shared space today had at last noticed her presence here with her. And she knew that voice, knew it from the moment the first syllable hit the air.

Of course, Ingrid had not become any less diligent since the last time Marianne had come to the training grounds. Of course, Marianne should have expected it to be Ingrid who was here, when all of the other students were taking advantage of a mild day and a relatively light load of schoolwork.

Slowly, inexorably, Marianne lifted her head from where she had been staring at the ground. There was no avoiding it, nothing Marianne could have hoped to have done to avoid it. The moment Ingrid’s voice sounded in the silence, Marianne’s head began to lift, and though there was no will in her body but her own, it felt very much like her neck was being directed by an outside force, like her chin was being pushed up by something that was not her own inclination.

Ingrid looked… Well, Marianne supposed that accounted, at least somewhat, for why she had looked up. Ingrid had clearly been in here a long while already, long enough for several locks of her long hair to have come loose of its already-loose braid, long enough for a sheen of sweat to have risen on her brow, visible even at the considerably distance from which Marianne stood, and she looked…

She still did not look like the idealized feminine beauties you would find in paintings all across the richest castles of the Alliance. The idealized feminine beauties had no doubt never been so sweaty in all their lives, though the disheveled state of Ingrid’s hair might find a reflection in some of the more risqué depictions. (Marianne had never seen such—they were not the sort of things you just had hanging out in your picture gallery where any and every visitor could see them, and her adoptive father had never had any interest in keeping the like in their own home. But you did _hear_ things, and not least because of some of the ideas some of the merchants in the town had tried to put into Ignatz’s head.) You were unlikely to find in any of the greatest artwork by the greatest painters a girl who looked particularly as Ingrid did now.

But she looked _incredible_. Marianne’s stomach fluttered in a fashion that just crested the threshold of pain as she stared at the girl who stood before her, for now failing to register the mounting concern in Ingrid’s face. The padded training clothes Ingrid wore failed utterly to disguise her lean profile; the way she was standing now, one leg braced a few inches in front of the other, the butt of her lance resting against her right shoulder and the rest of her arm curled around it, her body twisted at the waist so that she could get a better look at Marianne, only emphasized taut, healthy muscle, a body hale and no doubt vigorous as well. Her hair caught on the late afternoon sunlight, turning an already golden blonde to a blazing, brilliant gold, so bright that Marianne half-expected that if she came closer, she would find Ingrid’s hair giving off its own warmth. Her cheeks were flushed a rosy pink from exertion, and even the sheen of sweat on her brow served only to emphasize the glow of healthy, vibrant skin.

Ingrid looked alive in a way that no painting ever could, and by that measure, she far outstripped the beauty of even the most celebrated of women whose existence was restricted only to strokes of graphite and paint over top. She looked alive in a way that Marianne had not felt in years, not since before she had become the sole bearer of her own tainted blood. She hated to look at it. (She hated herself for feeling anything at all when she looked upon it.) She could look nowhere else, as mesmerizing a sight as it was. (She hated herself for being so easily mesmerized, for forgetting so easily the consequences that came with her luck and anyone unfortunate enough to be so close to her as to catch it.) Marianne had never seen the like.

She had never seen the like, and thus, for several moments did she fail to comprehend the darkness slowly overshadowing the glow of Ingrid’s face.

“You’re not alright,” Ingrid muttered, stepping forward with a sharp, worried gleam brightening her green eyes to something that Marianne could scarcely bear to glance at, let alone fall under the gaze of.

The words, the moment, the _stare_ , finally galvanized Marianne in a way that naught else had managed since she had first looked up. An excuse was at her lips in a moment—“Oh, no, I’m alright; it’s just that I…”—though it might have been mumbled, and fumbled, and might have petered out into nothing before Marianne could string it together in its entirety.

With most others here, it would have been enough to put them off of coming any closer, though they might make their unhappiness clear as they retreated. But Ingrid was seemingly determined to break the mold in more ways than just one. Though she tilted her head slightly at Marianne’s attempt to dissuade her from making it her concern, it was ultimately insufficient even to make Ingrid break her stride.

What had from a distance seemed like a shadow, perhaps like anger at the idea of being watched unawares—Marianne might have been innocent of it this time, but there had been other occasions when her guilt could not be in question—or anger at the thought that she could have been ill-wished by a glance from the accursed (there was no way that Ingrid could know that much, and the knowledge of such did nothing to slow down the wheels of Marianne’s imagination), resolved itself into something matching much more closely with Ingrid’s eyes. It was less immediately threatening than anger would have been. There was that. But worry was…

There was a different kind of threat in worry, though it was less salient than the threat presented by anger. Marianne knew worry’s threat. She had known it for years, though it might come to her only fleetingly. Marianne stiffened as Ingrid closed in on her, tried to tell herself to turn round and walk out of the training grounds, whatever offense she might give by doing so…

And she found her feet completely rooted to the spot, as likely to move as the trees outside were to uproot themselves and start to dance around in time to the music spilling out of the cathedral. Marianne could not move, could not absent herself from the sight of Ingrid’s piercing, worried stare.

Perhaps that was fitting. She had come here seeking to avoid a great humiliation at some point in the future, but she had never seriously thought that she would be able to avoid humiliation completely. She had only briefly considered that she might be able to avoid the smaller humiliation that came from having a small group of students bear witness to her ineptitude, and really, she should not have done. It was only a fleeting fancy, and one that was guaranteed to bring her pain once it became clear that that fancy had about as much basis in reality as the fantastical stories spun up by traveling bards. She should not have lost sight of what was her lot. She should not have lost sight of it for even a moment.

“Are you feeling ill?” Ingrid was speaking to her, because the world would not wait for Marianne to gather herself, would not wait for herself to brace herself against humiliation. Marianne watched in horrified fascination as Ingrid stretched out a hand towards Marianne’s shoulder, barely remembering to breathe a sigh of relief when Ingrid let it fall before it could make contact with her body; you did not touch a body like this, you did not touch the desecrate, not without taking onto yourself the risk of becoming desecrate within your own skin. “Did you hurt yourself while you were training?”

Marianne could almost laugh at that, though she suspected that the noise that left her mouth would have borne closer resemblance to the harsh cackle of a dying crow. Ingrid must certainly not have been paying her _any_ mind before her voice cut through the silence like a thunderclap. Ingrid was an intelligent girl, and no stranger to long hours of training, besides. If she had been watching Marianne, she would know: in order to hurt yourself during training, it is generally accepted that you must have actually been _exerting_ yourself, rather than flailing about uselessly like a clown in a pantomime.

Marianne would have loved to have been able to say ‘yes,’ if only because ‘yes’ got her out of the training grounds, if only because ‘yes’ would have been a sign that she was actually making enough progress with the lance to be able to overexert herself while training with it. Marianne would have loved to say ‘yes,’ but she could not make her mouth form the word. She could not form the lie, not in any extremity. It would be far too easily proven as a lie, and was far too avoidable a humiliation for Marianne to trap herself within its cage.

“I’m fine,” she muttered, at last able to let her gaze drift where it would, down towards the floor. Marianne scrubbed at her arm, longing to be able to cut away at the layers of fabric separating fingernails from skin, so that she could rent the skin beneath her nails and feel something that wasn’t her stomach churning in endless just-barely-pain. “I… I’m fine. I just…”

She just… what, exactly? Whatever it was, it was nothing that Marianne could have said to Ingrid, and expected her to understand. Marianne could not expect anyone to understand the strange and pathetic thoughts that squirmed endlessly in her mind.

“I see you’ve come back for the lance,” Ingrid tried, the stiff note in her voice painfully obvious, even to one such as Marianne. “I… I haven’t seen you were for a few days.”

The idea that Ingrid had been _looking_ for her, had been waiting for, even _hoping_ for Marianne to appear at the doors of the training grounds, filled Marianne with a strange, slightly sickening mix of disparate emotions. The idea that humiliation could have been hers much sooner, if she had lost patience more quickly and come in on a day when Ingrid wasn’t so utterly absorbed in her training as to not notice at first that Marianne was in here with her, made Marianne feel for a moment very much like she was going to throw up right here, right now, all over the floor. For a moment. But the sensation of nausea vanished with rapid, almost frightening speed in the wake of the second realization that hit Marianne in this moment: Ingrid _had_ been waiting for her here. For whatever reason (Marianne could not imagine anything that did not amount to pity), she had come in every day, waiting for Marianne to appear, looking for her in the doorway, _hoping_ that she would appear.

Marianne did not know why such a thing should make her feel so buoyant. Ingrid should not be waiting for Marianne in the training grounds for any reason, not when it could bring down so much ill upon her, if they were not both so very careful. (And sometimes, being careful was not enough. Sometimes, all the caution in the world was not enough. Marianne could not imagine a woman more prudent than her mother, and look what had happened to _her_.) Marianne should not want for anyone to be waiting for her, either because they wished her ill—she kept expecting that scholar to turn up at the monastery gates, was always surprised when he didn’t, and always turned once more to assuming that it would happen next week, or next month, or perhaps, if her luck was even worse than usual, the next _day_ —or because they wished her well. There were some who, misguidedly, to be sure, wished her well, though they were fortunately not misguided enough to follow her around, or to go to places they expected her to be and wait for her there. Marianne hoped that Ingrid was not one of those, for Ingrid’s own sake, if no one else’s. It would end only in grief, when whatever it was that was to become of Marianne, however ill it was, finally came to pass.

“You shouldn’t be waiting for me,” Marianne muttered, if only because she ought to make _some_ kind of attempt. Even if her heart wasn’t really in it, she ought to make an attempt. “I… Ingrid, you shouldn’t…”

“Why not?” Ingrid asked in return, more softly than Marianne had expected. There was something in the softness of her voice that made Marianne want to sink into the ground—and she was _not_ going to be examining that feeling, not at all.

The answer to that question should have been self-evident, or so Marianne thought. Even if Ingrid might be wholly unaware of Marianne’s Crest, might be wholly unaware of the tainted blood that flowed through her veins and the misfortune that came down upon herself and those around her as a result, be they not exceptionally slippery when it came to avoiding the effects of curses and misfortune, it must be plain to all who looked upon Marianne that she was just _not_ the sort of person who they ought to be wasting time on. (That she sometimes wished for them to waste their time on her was irrelevant. When Marianne was ruled by the more rational regions of her mind, she knew that people should not waste their time on one such as her.)

The answer to the question should have been self-evident, and Marianne, all Marianne could do was stare at Ingrid in open bafflement. Forget all the reasons why Marianne shouldn’t stand so close to Ingrid, even if it meant backing away and risking offense; Marianne couldn’t even remember now why she shouldn’t be _looking_ Ingrid’s way. It was just… Why…

Herself, Ingrid seemed certainly to register Marianne’s bafflement, but did not seem to grasp at any of the reasons behind it. “Marianne, if you need any help with that lance—“ here, Ingrid gestured towards the lance clutched in Marianne’s right hand, her hand coming so close to Marianne’s that Marianne could feel the gust of wind generated by the motion of Ingrid’s hand on the back of her own “—I _can_ help you. I may not be as experienced as Gilbert or Seteth, but I’ve been training with a lance since I was a child, and you and I are about the same size. If you have any questions about your stance or the way you need to swing or stab with the lance, I think I could help you.”

Now, _now_ , Marianne’s jaw unstuck, let her frown and grimace and twist her mouth in an expression that was neither of those things and yet both at the same time, and ask, at last, “Why… why would you do that?”

She needed to improve. That much was clear to Marianne; she needed to improve with the lance if she wished not to be a disappointment, if she wished to be allowed to learn anything of fighting form the back of a horse or a pegasus. Marianne needed to improve, and if someone who was much more experienced, much more _competent_ with a lance than her was offering completely unprompted to help her, she ought to be grateful. She ought to agree to it.

But Marianne just didn’t… She couldn’t see why Ingrid would…

Marianne half-expected to wake up sore and tired in her bed, from this especially bewildering dream. It would make more sense for this to be the fragmented logic of her dreaming mind than the waking world continually confounding her. But the pain in her stiff, tense shoulders was entirely too present, entirely too focused, to be the feature of a dream. Pain was something for the waking world.

And confusion was for the waking world today as well, confusion that Marianne hoped would be resolved by the time the day was done, thought she was not nearly as optimistic as she could have been on that score. (Where had optimism ever gotten her, anyways?)

Ingrid’s brow, slick and shining with sweat, furrowed as she visibly thought over her answer. Another sign that this was the waking world, not a dream. Marianne did not think that someone appearing to her in her dreams would have ever stopped to think about the answer they intended to give to a question. The figures of her dreams were forever too self-assured to ever be assailed by something as simple as _doubt_. Marianne watched Ingrid as she went over whatever response it was she intended to give in silence, watched as the words rose so close to her lips that Marianne could almost make them out etching themselves against the underside of Ingrid’s skin.

The silence that dragged out between them as Ingrid thought over her answer was far more agonizing than it should have been.

“I… I’m guessing that if I say something like ‘I would do this for anyone,’ you wouldn’t accept that as a proper answer,” Ingrid tried cautiously. Marianne wasn’t sure what it was that Ingrid saw in her face, but apparently Ingrid saw something that convinced her that Marianne was of this opinion. Ingrid nodded to herself, her lips pursed. Then, she sighed, tapping the shaft of her lance against her shoulder. “I meant what I said earlier, you know. I think you could be very good with a lance, if you practice at it, and you have proper training with it. You don’t seem to have had much instruction yet, but I can see that you have no small amount of natural talent with it; if _I_ can see it, I can easily believe that Gilbert or Seteth would be able to see it as well.

“I don’t know why it is that you haven’t gone to either of them for help. Actually—“ Ingrid set her jaw, something dark flashing behind her eyes “—that’s a lie. I think I do know. Marianne, I don’t know why it is you feel as if you don’t deserve anyone’s help, but that’s _not true_.”

Marianne felt something then that she had not felt in a very long time. Her temper flared suddenly, like a fire after oil had been poured upon it, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, her temper was directed at something other than herself. “How do you know that?” she did not quite snap, could not find it in herself to snap. “How do you know that it isn’t true?”

Nothing could change the reality of her own tainted blood. Marianne could not wish the taint away, no matter what sort of prayers she might send up to the Goddess. Appealing to the Goddess would no doubt only make matters worse, for while Marianne’s blood might be a sign of her own disfavor, it was still a sign of disfavor that the Goddess had personally bestowed upon her, and to go to the Goddess and tell her to take it all back would have been the height of presumption. Come what may, Marianne’s tainted blood would always be with her.

Like Marianne’s shadow, her tainted blood would always be with her, and that necessitated a level of acceptance she thought would have otherwise been beyond her. She did not like the situation but, then, she did not _have_ to like it, now did she? No, she must only be pious and obedient enough to accept the Goddess’s disfavor for what it was. There must always be the desecrate in the world. Marianne did not understand _why_ it must be so, but her understanding was not required. All that was required of her was that she accept her lot in life. That she accept her eventual fate, no matter how unhappy it might be.

But those whom the Goddess had blessed rather than cursed should not bother with one such as her. They should not bother with her. They who were made for more than misfortune should not be concerned over misfortune’s vessel. They should not…

The thoughts rang out in Marianne’s mind, echoing over and over again until the voice with which they spoke was no longer hers. Briefly, the syllables were formed by a voice that sounded like her father’s, but in no time at all, even that small amount of familiarity was dead and gone, and what was left behind was nothing that Marianne could have identified as human.

No way to make Ingrid see all of this without telling her all that Marianne was forbidden to say. No way to make the words grating against Marianne’s heart grate any less painfully.

(Of course she wished things were different. Who wouldn’t?)

At last, Ingrid was opening her mouth, ready to speak, and Marianne braced herself against words that, whatever they might be, must assail her like the furious winds that rode down from the north alongside the worst of the summer thunderstorms. She only hoped they would not cut, as well.

(Of course Marianne wished that things could have been different. That had more than a little to do with why she responded to Ingrid’s answer the way she did.)

“I will not say,” Ingrid started slowly, as if weighing each word for the precise weight of each syllable that sat on her tongue, “that it is something that I would do for anyone who came to me seeking help.” A lopsided smile tilted her mouth. “That _really_ wouldn’t satisfy you, would it? I…” The smile evaporated. “…I have noticed how poorly you seem to rate your own abilities. You don’t speak much of them in mixed company, but I have noticed that you never have a kind word for yourself. It would be difficult _not_ to notice, honestly.”

No, Marianne imagined not. After all, when you were someone who had no abilities to speak of, save a facility for caring for animals, that were worth praising, why waste your voice on empty words?

To Marianne’s surprise, Ingrid laughed suddenly—or, at least, the little huffing sound that left Ingrid’s mouth bore the shape of a laugh. “I’m not entirely dissimilar, myself. Whenever I perform an exercise or a maneuver successfully, my mind goes to ways I could have done better, even if my instructors are doing nothing but praising my efforts.”

That wasn’t the same thing, Marianne thought, as she watched Ingrid mutely. That wasn’t the same thing at all. The drive for improvement that lived in someone so strong and so talented was not at all the same thing as the honest assessment of capabilities that lived in someone destined for nothing but failure.

“Sylvain has called me Lady Not-Good-Enough once or twice, usually after I refuse to go to the dining hall with him no the grounds that I want to perfect my form.” An ambivalent expression, halfway between a smile and a frown, rippled on Ingrid’s face before dropping back down into nothingness. “If I had to guess, I would say that he speaks with the aim of getting me to take things less seriously. And I do leave the training grounds in time, though I do it on my _own_ schedule, and not his. But I strive for perfection, and there have been some who say to me that I drive myself harder than I should, that I wait too long before seeking help from those who could help me in my stubbornness.

“It’s not the same, between you and me,” Ingrid said, very softly. The light in her eyes was tempered to something gentler, something that felt almost like something that could have reached out and set its hands on Marianne’s shoulders, though whether the touch would have felt gentle or felt of lead, Marianne could not say. (There was a part of her, larger than it should have been, that wished dearly to find out.) “I know it’s not. And I know…” She bit her lip, running her teeth slowly across the bottom lip, before finding her words once more. “I know that I can’t know what is in your mind, or in your heart. But I do think that you sell yourself entirely too short.”

Now, _now_ , Marianne had to open her mouth to give protest, if only because the truth demanded it. But before she could actually _say_ anything, Ingrid spotted the movement and pinned her with a stare that had suddenly sharpened to the point of a dagger. A dagger that had clearly been put to a whetstone at some point in the very recent past.

“I _do_ think so, Marianne,” Ingrid insisted, her voice rising up just a little bit before she visibly tamped it back down. She put her voice to a more even volume, but there was no disguising the passion that tinted the words as she went on, “I’ve seen you work with a sword. I don’t think you were trained for combat, but you were obviously _trained_ , and you obviously took to your lessons well. You know how to handle a sword, and you know how to handle it gracefully. I…” She faltered for a moment. “I think I’ve heard that there are fencing competitions in the Alliance? That you do it for sport?”

Marianne nodded. “I… I’ve never competed.” She did not trust herself to speak any further.

Ingrid tilted her head to one side, taking a thick lock of golden hair along with it. “You probably could have done quite well. If there were any monetary rewards, you could have made a _killing_ —but that’s not the point,” she said suddenly, seemingly reminded herself of that as much as saying so to Marianne. “You may not have been trained with battle in mind, but I can see that you have no amount of skill with a sword. You _do_ , Marianne, no matter how much you might claim otherwise.”

She would have been better if her father was still alive. If her father was still alive to teach her all of the things he had intended to teach her after the last sparring session they ever had together, if the misfortune attached to their tainted blood had never found them, Marianne would have been better, would have been so much better. She could not rightly claim to be _good_ , not when her training had been cut so short and she was now having to adapt what she had learned before to swordplay for a very different end.

(Professor Melusine was an able teacher. Marianne would not deny her that, when it would have been so fundamentally dishonest and so easily disproven. But Professor Melusine was a mercenary through and through, and though Marianne would be surprised if she had never heard of tournaments, Marianne would be even more surprised if Professor Melusine had ever participated in one. It was clear to Marianne that Professor Melusine could only clearly envisage one use for a sword, or a lance, or an axe, or a bow. And Marianne, who had grown up knowing of many others, sometimes had a hard time translating Professor Melusine’s tutelage into something that did not make her recoil.)

But there was another part of her, a part that had started out small and easily suppressed, but had begun to grow out of Marianne’s control, that wanted to accept the praise. That wanted the words of praise, wanted them to wash over her and sink into their skin where they could not be taken away from her. It made her stomach churn, but she wanted this.

(Her hungers were her own. They were her own, but Marianne would have thought she knew them better than this.)

“And… and they’re not the same weapons, _obviously_ , and wielding each of them is a very different experience, but I think you have some talent with the lance as well. You may not be able to see it, but you do. You just…” Ingrid paused, and favored Marianne with the strangest smile she had ever seen. It was gentle and hopeful and a little apprehensive, but the strangest thing about it was that someone was smiling at _her_ that way. “You just need a little help. And to sign up for sessions with Gilbert or Seteth.” Ingrid’s mouth quirked. “I think Seteth might be better for you. He’s a little stricter as an instructor—though Gilbert is very strict on his own—but he gives the students much more individualized attention. And you don’t need to worry about either of them putting you down if you don’t do well during a session; neither of them are like that.”

Marianne couldn’t even mumble out a response. Her face felt as if she had thrust it before an open fire. She felt as if she would breathe fire if she opened her mouth.

“So…” Ingrid took a step back, and crossed her arms behind her back. Her lance, still held in her right hand, stuck out awkwardly from behind her back, like she was trying to dangle a broken beam and hold up a wall all on her own. “If I asked if I could help you with your lance, would you say yes?”

She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t. They shouldn’t have been speaking, Marianne shouldn’t have been _looking_ at her, Marianne should have said no, mumbled her excuses and then her apologies, and then left the training grounds behind her. She should have taken more care to avoid Ingrid in the future, Ingrid who was determined to care and to insert herself in spite of all the reasons that she shouldn’t. Marianne should have taken all the care in the world to avoid being present in the training grounds as the same time as Ingrid, expect in scheduled training sessions, even if that meant that she could only come to the training grounds in the dead of night, fumbling through her exercises by candlelight or moonlight as she lost even more sleep than she would have lost to nightmares or to pacing around in her room.

It was what was best, for Marianne to refuse her. It was best for Ingrid, because Marianne’s luck was less likely to catch on her skin and burrow deep into her bones if Marianne spent as little time around her as possible. It was best for Ingrid, for she would be less likely to fall to misfortune this way (Look what had happened to Marianne’s mother, who did not bear the tainted blood but who had mingled with those who did, who had shared her roof and her hearth and her bed with those who did. She did not bear the tainted blood, but that had not been enough to save her). It was what was best for Marianne, because involving others in her own misfortune could only heighten the disfavor the Goddess bore her. It was what was best for Marianne, because if she was to entangle Ingrid in her own misfortunes, she did not think she could bear it.

It was what was best. It was absolutely what was best. If Marianne’s mind was walking down the paths that it should, if her heart was walking down the most righteous path that one such as her could ever hope to walk, she would have accepted the refusal as the only real option she had immediately.

It was impossible for anyone to ever be entirely righteous. This much had been impressed upon Marianne from the earliest church services that she could remember. It was impossible even for those who had been blessed by the Goddess with a Crest that was not also a curse to be completely and entirely righteous. The priests often admonished their listeners of this, to remind them that they must be vigilant against sin and wickedness, that they must be vigilant for any sign of either growing within themselves. It was easy to fall into disobedience and heresy. It was harder, much harder, to climb back onto the righteous path after having fallen off of it. Harder still, if you were of tainted blood, and thus naturally inclined towards evil. If you were naturally inclined towards evil, you must be forever evil, if evil you did not wish to do.

Marianne liked to think she was vigilant, or at least as vigilant as she was capable of. It was difficult to do evil when you interacted with others as little as possible. It was difficult to drag them into your own misfortune when you kept your distance from them as much as you possibly could. She ought to stay vigilant, ought to keep her distance, ought to turn Ingrid down, give her apologies and her excuses, and then leave.

She ought to refuse.

And yet…

And yet, that impulse that had been born within her, the sensation of how _good_ it felt to be praised when she actually allowed the praise to seep past her skin, it was growing stronger and stronger, so strong that within moments, it overpowered her sense.

Marianne drew a deep breath. A tremulous smile was trying to play on her lips, though she shoved it down; it was not appropriate to such an occasion, not appropriate at all. But what she could not control was the way her stomach fluttered as she nodded her head, as she mumbled a barely audible, “Umm… yes, thank you, Ingrid.”

She needed help. She knew that she did, though it might have taken her a long while to get to the point of accepting it. If she wished to avoid the greater humiliation that was to come in the next shared training session between the three houses, she must seek out help to become more proficient with the lance, as proficient as someone like her was ever likely to be. (Ingrid seemed to think she possessed talent. Marianne… It would take a bit more to convince her of that. A lot more, actually, if she was being very honest with herself. But that was a struggle for another day.) Marianne did not wish to pass on her luck to another. Truly, she did not. But if she was to take the risk, perhaps it would be better to risk passing it on to someone who had volunteered to help her.

And if Ingrid thought that she could do well… If Ingrid could see something in her that was capable of competence, of _talent_ …

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing, to have the possibility of seeing that in herself, some day. It probably wouldn’t. It really probably wouldn’t ever come to pass. (It was going to take some time to convince her otherwise.) But as long as the fantasy held in her mind, Marianne thought it could be a pleasant one.

She thought it could be pleasant to look in Ingrid’s eyes, and see the reflection of a girl who could do better.

Whatever was going on in Ingrid’s mind, it clearly did not inspire the same hesitancy (even now, when she had made her decision, hesitancy) in her. A pleased smile unfurled across Ingrid’s lips, plainly not battling against even the most feeble attempts to hide it. “Good.” She ducked her head, saying a little more quietly, “Good. Let’s start with your form, then. You need to have good form before you can hope to go through your exercises successfully; if you’re not holding the lance properly, you won’t be able to swing it properly or stab with it properly. You and I are…” She looked Marianne over. “…Yes, we’re the same height. I should be able to demonstrate it for you properly.”

That Ingrid was not an instructor at the Academy, that she was a student and one who had been started off with training lances for lack of experience with actual, battle-ready lances, did not particularly matter to Marianne in this moment. Ingrid was clearly miles ahead of her, and unlike the instructors, she had actually come to Marianne and offered her help. She was here now, she was offering to help, she was bright and golden and _alive_ in a way that none of Marianne’s shadows ever could be…

Marianne nodded, and watched more intently than she had watched anything in a while as Ingrid brandished her lance, holding it for several moments in a resting position, a position that Ingrid told her was meant to keep soldiers from exhausting themselves holding what could potentially be a _very_ heavy weapon as they waited for a signal to commence an attack. She held that position, and after a few moments, instructed Marianne to try to copy her.

It felt… Well, there was no denying that it felt strange to hold her lance the way Ingrid had demonstrated, that it felt awkward and difficult as her muscles strained to hold the lance that way and keep it there for long periods of time. _This_ was how a soldier held their lance when they were waiting for a signal? Really? Marianne grimaced as she clutched at the shaft of the lance, trying to maintain the position without just dropping the lance to the floor. Forget training to maintain her forms. If she wished to ever have even the slightest amount of competence, strength training would be needed, weeks or even months of it before she could even hope to—

“Hang on.” Ingrid set her lance on the ground, and moved to stand close at Marianne’s side. “You’ve extended your arms too far.”

Or perhaps things would be otherwise.

“Oh.” Marianne’s face grew hot. Of course she had been doing it wrong. That she’d not seen it before was… Actually, that was not a surprise, either.

But Ingrid did not comment on that. Instead, she reached out, and Marianne felt her hot face grow hotter as Ingrid’s hands closed over her own. Ingrid’s skin was a bit rougher than Marianne’s own, callused from long exercise and training with the lance and the sword. Ingrid, fortunately, did not dwell on Marianne’s face, did not seem to register at all the significance of such a gesture—or if she did, she was doing an excellent job of hiding it.

“Hold your hands here, and here,” Ingrid told her in an undertone, her voice absent with concentration. “And position your feet just a little further apart; you want to distribute your weight evenly across them both, so that you won’t list to one side.”

Blushing, Marianne followed her instructions, and found that… Yes, this was a bit better. It still felt awkward, but considerably less awkward than it had before, and after a few moments with the adjustments to her arms and her legs, even the awkwardness began to fade away.

“And that is how far apart your hands should be on the lance whenever you’re holding it or swinging it,” Ingrid told her. A small smile played on her lips, something like satisfaction gleaming in her eyes. “You see, it only took a small change for you to hold the lance just the way you needed to; you already had it mostly right all on your own.”

Maybe. At the very least, if Marianne was sore and aching after the end of this training session, at least it would be from meaningful exertion and not from her own frustration at having come away from yet another session having made no progress whatsoever.

Ingrid had Marianne run through another few basic forms and stances—“My own instructors wouldn’t let me move on until I had mastered every one of these; they must have had a _reason_ for that”—for the next several minutes, before, at last, Ingrid called things to a halt in their entirety.

Marianne did not protest. There was still a part of her, however quiet it might have lately become, that whispered of all of the risks she was subjecting Ingrid to by speaking with her, by listening to her, by letting her do something so dangerous as _touch_ her. There was another part of her that was starting to feel a little stiff in a way that she knew would translate to soreness after she woke up the following morning, and did not wish to add too much to what inevitably must be hers, not yet. And there was a part of her, a strange, tender, rarely-used part of her that felt…

Marianne could not describe the glow that she felt as she set the butt of her lance against the ground, not in exact words. What she could say was that she felt as if her feet might leave the ground at any moment, as if she might float all the way up to the ceiling and never come back down again.

It could not be a balm against all ills. Marianne could not even say how long the feeling would _last_. But it was something. It was certainly something.

“I…” There was some hesitance in Ingrid’s voice once more, though it was not the hesitance of someone who thought ill of the enterprise she had set on, and for that, Marianne was more grateful than she had expected of herself, so grateful that her stomach clenched with it. “…I hope that you will allow me to help you again, the next time we’re both free to come here. I _do_ still think you would be best off training under Seteth,” she added hastily. “His skill far outstrips my own, and he has much more experience as a teacher, besides. But I am willing to give you whatever advice and whatever aid I am capable of.” She set her jaw in a living portrait of stubbornness. “For as long as you need it.”

 _For as long as it takes to make you see that you are worthy of it_ , she did not say, but Marianne could still hear easily, regardless.

And she murmured a soft _thank you_ , and offered a shy smile. Whatever she had done to earn even this small devotion, Marianne did not know. She did not know if she should grasp onto it, or shun it and leave it somewhere it could go unblemished. But as long as it was offered to her, she could not help but bask in it.

She hoped that that feeling would be strong enough to carry her to the next time.


End file.
